I. Summary

“I need to talk about it, I need
to feel that my voice is being heard, not just mine but that of all the
families of the disappeared. For my family, every celebration, every holiday becomes a funeral
because they are not with us.”

—Mohamed Hamil Ferjany to Human Rights Watch,
USA, August 2009

“I couldn’t have spoken to you in
2005 the way I can today.”

—Libyan Lawyer interviewed by Human Rights
Watch, Tripoli, April 2009

Over the past decade Libya dramatically transformed its
international status from a pariah state under UN, EU and US sanctions to a
country that, in 2009 alone, held the Presidency of the UN Security Council,
the chair of the African Union and the Presidency of the UN General Assembly.
But this transformation in Libya’s foreign policy has not galvanized an
equivalent transformation of Libya’s human rights record which remains
poor, despite some limited progress in recent years.

This report examines recent human rights developments in
Libya, identifies key areas of concern and highlights steps the Libyan
government must take to meet its obligations under international human rights
law. Libya’s reintegration into the international community means that
its human rights record has and will come under increasing scrutiny as the
absolute control the Libyan government customarily exercised over the flow of
information out of Libya continues to erode. Human Rights Watch believes this
is an opportunity for human rights reform that the Libyan authorities should
pursue and other governments should promote in their relations with Libya.

This report updates Human Rights Watch’s 2006 report
on Libya, Words to Deeds, and focuses on the areas where there has been
some limited progress, such as freedom of expression, as well as those
that remain severely restricted, such as freedom of association. The report
also addresses how the Internal Security Agency remains responsible for
systematic violations of Libyan rights, including the detention of political
prisoners, enforced disappearances and deaths in custody. This report does not
examine the treatment of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Libya, most
recently reviewed in Human Rights Watch’s 2009 report, Pushed Back,
Pushed Down: Italy’s Forced Return of Boat Migrants and Asylum Seekers,
Libya’s Mistreatment of Migrants and Asylum Seekers.

Overall, the past five years have witnessed an improvement
in the human rights situation, though far less than promised or required. There
are less frequent reports of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances
compared to the two previous decades. There has been greater tolerance of
freedom of expression and some progress in addressing gross violations of the
past, though this remains very unpredictable. Limited steps toward
increased tolerance of dissent indicate that at least some elements of the
government recognize the need for reform. Two new private newspapers and the
internet have created a new limited space for freedom of expression, and some
unprecedented public demonstrations have been allowed to take place. The
Justice Ministry has announced plans to reform the most repressive provisions
of the penal code, though it has not yet made the proposed revisions public.
The justice system at times has made independent decisions, ordering the
government to pay compensation to people whose rights have been violated and,
in some cases, the government has complied.

Yet, despite work to develop a new penal code, an
essentially repressive legal framework remains in place, as does the ability of
government security forces to act with impunity against dissent. Many trials,
especially those before the State Security Court, still fail to meet
international due process standards. Overall, unjustified limits on free
expression and association remain the norm, including penal code provisions
that criminalize "insulting public officials" or "opposing the
ideology of the Revolution." Many relatives of prisoners killed in a 1996
incident at Abu Salim prison are still waiting to learn how their relatives
died and to see those responsible punished. The jurisdiction of courts,
the duties of government agencies, respect for legal rights of prisoners and
adherence to the country’s stated list of human rights often remain
murky, erratic and contradictory.

The basis for this report is research conducted by Human
Rights Watch during a ten-day visit to Libya in April 2009, the
organization’s most recent trip to the country, as well as general
research and monitoring of the state of human rights in Libya from outside the
country. Human Rights Watch met with the Secretary of Public Security and the
Secretary of Justice and visited Abu Salim prison, where it interviewed six
prisoners. Human Rights Watch also met with members of the Tripoli Bar
Association and the Journalists’ Syndicate, relatives of prisoners and a
former political prisoner.

Freedom of expression remains severely restricted by the Libyan
penal code. However, the past five years have witnessed a gradual opening of a
new, still vulnerable, space for freedom of expression. Cracks in the wall that
the government has set up against free expression are thin but evident. Oea and
Quryna, two private newspapersestablished in August 2007, allow
their journalists to write more critically about the government than was
previously tolerated in the press, though this criticism remains in line with
the political agenda of Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the son of Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi. Libyan correspondents for websites based abroad that frequently
publish criticism of the government and news of human rights violations are
allowed to operate in Libya and have even managed to obtain press cards. This
gradual opening of space has brought with it an increase in criticism of
government policies in the media. However, there has also been an
increase in the number of prosecutions of journalists, although no journalist
has been sentenced to prison so far.

There is no freedom of association in Libya because the
concept of an independent civil society goes directly against Gaddafi’s
theory of governance by the masses. Law 71 still criminalizes political
parties, and the penal code criminalizes the establishment of organizations
that are “against the principles of the Libyan Jamahireya system.”
Law 19, "On Associations," requires a political body to approve all
nongovernmental organizations, does not allow appeals against negative
decisions and provides for continuous governmental interference in the running
of the organization. The government has refused to allow independent
journalists' and lawyers' organizations. The law itself allows the government
to revoke the authorization of an association at any time without needing to
provide justification. There are a number of semi-official organizations that
do charitable work, providing services and organizing seminars, but none that
publicly take critical stances against the government.

Libya has no independent nongovernmental organizations. The
only organizations that can do human rights work, the most sensitive area of
all in Libya, derive their political standing from their personal affiliation
with the regime. The main organization that can publicly criticize human
rights violations is the Gaddafi International Charity and Development
Foundation (Gaddafi Foundation), chaired by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. A
second organization, Waatasemu, is run by Dr. Aisha al-Gaddafi, Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi’s daughter, and has intervened in death penalty cases and
women’s rights issues. The International Organization for Peace, Care and
Relief (IOPCR), run by Khaled Hamedi, the son of a member of the Revolutionary
Command Council, is the only organization able to access migrant detention
centers.

Attempting to set up a human rights organization is a risky
venture with the potential for harassment by Libyan security and also criminal
prosecution. In 2008, for example, a group of lawyers and journalists tried to
set up two organizations dealing with human rights and democracy. The
authorities initially approved their request, but the Internal Security Agency,
the section of the General People’s Committee (ministry) for Public
Security in charge of controlling domestic political activity, subsequently
blocked the process. The group ultimately abandoned the initiative after the
abduction and assault of one of the lawyers (who was a founding member of both
organizations) for one day. The government says it is investigating the
abduction.

The Internal Security Agency retains full control over two
prisons in Libya, Abu Salim and Ain Zara, which are notorious for the arbitrary
detention of political prisoners. According to the Secretary for Justice, there
currently are approximately 500 prisoners who have served their sentence or who
have been acquitted by Libyan courts, but remain imprisoned under orders of the
Internal Security Agency. The Agency has refused to implement the
decisions of the Libyan judiciary to release detainees, despite calls from the
Libyan secretary of justice for their release. A number of prisoners remain
disappeared, including high-profile Libyan opposition members who were last
heard of in Abu Salim prison. The Internal Security Agency also continues to
detain individuals who were sentenced by the People’s Court, notorious
for trying individuals for political crimes without access to defense lawyers,
and since abolished in 2005. The lack of fairness in the trials of such
detainees means they should be released or re-tried before an ordinary court.

In late June 1996 an estimated 1200 prisoners were killed in
Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. For years the authorities denied this had
taken place. Until late 2008, the vast majority of the families
of the prisoners who were killed had received no information about them.
Some families of detainees killed at the prison sued the government in court,
seeking to learn what happened to their relatives.

In June 2008, the North Benghazi court ordered the General
People’s Committee (the cabinet) , the General People’s Committee
(ministry) for Justice and the General People’s Committee (ministry) for
Public Security to inform the relatives of those who had died. The Libyan
authorities told Human Rights Watch in 2004 that an investigation into the
incident was under way; however, in April 2009 the Secretary of Justice
confirmed to Human Rights Watch that no such investigation took place. In
September 2009, the General People’s Committee for Defense established an
investigation panel composed of seven investigative judges and headed by a
former military judge to investigate the Abu Salim killings 13 years after they
occurred.

Following the decision of the North Benghazi
court, starting in December 2008 Libyan authorities began issuing death
certificates to the families, without acknowledging that they were related to
the Abu Salim killings. These documents do not include the correct date,
place or any cause of death. The authorities have offered
compensation of 200,000 Libyan Dinars ($162,300) in exchange for
assurances that family members will not pursue further legal claims in Libyan
or international courts. Calling for truth, accountability and appropriate
compensation, several hundred of the families formed a committee
to demand the facts about what occurred on the day of the prison killings and
the prosecution of those responsible. And most of the families in
Benghazi have refused to accept compensation on those terms, insisting
that they want to know the truth of what happened and to have those responsible
prosecuted. Mohamed Hamil Ferjany, a spokesperson for the
families now based in the US, told Human Rights Watch that for him, ”the
money is irrelevant. My family spent years suffering, not knowing where
my brothers were, only to be given a piece of paper 15 years later saying they
are dead and nothing more. We want justice.”

Over the past months, some of the families
insisting on accountability from the government have been demonstrating
primarily in Benghazi, but also in Al Bayda and Derna. The government has, for the most part, allowed the families to
demonstrate, and the Libyan press has covered their activities and demands.
However, the families also have faced harassment from security forces and
even, at times, arrest.

The 2005 abolition of the People’s Court was greeted
by human rights organizations as a welcome step on the path of reform. However,
in August 2007 a new State Security Court was established bearing a worrying
resemblance to the People’s Court which often issued heavy sentences
after unfair trials. Human Rights Watch has spoken to a number of defendants
brought before this court who were not able to meet with their defense counsel ahead
of the court session. Moreover, the court’s decisions are not available
to the public or even to the families of those sentenced. It is not clear whether
there is a court that can review decisions by the State Security Court nor
whether the right to appeal is granted to those it does sentence.

Despite statements by senior officials, including Libyan
Leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, that the country is working toward the
abolition of the death penalty and that it is rarely applied, Libya continues
to sentence people to death and to carry out death sentences. A system
based on Islamic law and custom allows for a pardon only when the family of a
murder victim is willing to grant one in exchange for financial compensation or
so-called “blood money.”

The steps Libya has taken to address some of its human
rights problems do not go far enough in addressing the systemic and legal
infrastructure that deprives Libyans of their basic human rights. Libya must
ensure that it complies with all of its obligations under international human
rights law and should immediately implement a number of reforms in policy, law
and practice. The General People’s Congress (the legislative assembly) should
repeal all provisions of the penal code and other laws such as Law 71 that
violate freedom of expression and association, and that any new draft laws are
fully in line with international human rights law. The Internal Security Agency
should immediately release all prisoners detained for peacefully exercising
their right to free expression or association and compensate them for their
detention. In addition, Internal Security agents should immediately release the
approximately 200 prisoners they are continuing to detain in Abu Salim prison
despite the fact that Libyan courts have acquitted them and ordered their
release or that they have completed their sentences.

Human Rights Watch further urges the People’s
Leadership Committees to immediately inform the families of prisoners who died
in the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre of the circumstances of the death of
their relatives and give them the remains of their relatives to bury. The
authorities must carry out a full and effective investigation and make public
the findings. This should be immediately followed by the prosecution of those
responsible for the summary execution of those prisoners. Under human rights law,
the Libyan government is under an obligation to make reparation and must not
pressure the families into accepting compensation instead of pursuing
accountability. The families of prisoners who were killed in Abu Salim have the
right to demonstrate peacefully and make demands to the Libyan authorities
without intimidation and harassment from the security forces. In addition, in
the context of Libya’s increasing political and economic integration in
the world community, Human Rights Watch urges all organizations and governments
engaging with Libya to ensure that the promotion of human rights in Libya forms
part of their relationship.

II. Recommendations

To the Libyan Government:

Human Rights Watch urges the Libyan authorities to implement
the reforms that they have announced and to ensure that these are carried out
in full compliance with international human rights law. In particular, Human
Rights Watch calls on the Libyan government to:

With respect to freedom of expression:

Repeal Law 71 of 1972, which bans any group
activity based on a political ideology opposed to the principles of the 1969
al-Fateh Revolution when Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi led a military coup
overthrowing the Libyan monarchy;

Repeal articles of the penal code that
criminalize free expression, including articles 166, 178, 206, 207, and
ensure that the new draft penal code is revised to comply with international
human rights law;

Present a revised draft penal code to the
Basic People’s Congresses for discussion as soon as possible;[1]

Release all individuals imprisoned or
detained solely for exercising their right to free expression.

With respect to freedom of association and assembly:

Allow for the establishment of independent
organizations that wish to peacefully exercise freedom of association;

Revoke the decision to refuse the
registration of the Association for Justice and the Centre for Democracy, the
organizations that a group of lawyers and journalists attempted to establish in
2008;

Repeal Law 71 of 1972 and related articles
of the penal code that criminalize free association and amend Law 19 to allow
for the establishment of independent non-governmental organizations;

Ensure that individuals seeking to establish
associations are not harassed by security forces or prosecuted for the
subsequent exercise of freedom of assembly;

Revoke General People’s Committee
decision number 312/2009 which further restricts freedom of assembly and
association with disproportionate and unnecessary requirements.

With respect to prisons under the control of the Internal
Security Agency:

Immediately release all prisoners acquitted
by courts;

Immediately release all prisoners who have
served their sentences;

Implement all legal decisions issued by
Libyan courts;

Allow the Office of the General Prosecutor
to conduct investigations regarding detention in Abu Salim and Ain Zara
prisons;

Quash all sentences against and immediately
release all political prisoners who are imprisoned solely for the peaceful
expression of their views or for activities protected by freedom of association
and assembly;

Compensate all who have been arbitrarily
detained;

Sign and ratify the International Convention
for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance;

Issue an invitation to the Special Rapporteur
on Extrajudicial Summary or Arbitrary Executions;

Facilitate the visit of the Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention and allow them full access to all centers of detention
including those controlled by the Internal Security Agency.

With respect to the Abu Salim prison killing in 1996:

Make public the conclusion of any
investigation which may have taken place into the Abu Salim incident;

Ensure that the investigation is conducted
by an independent and impartial judge and that the Internal Security Agency
fully cooperates with the investigation;

Identify those responsible for the killings
and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law in fair proceedings;

Implement the North Benghazi Court decision
to inform family members of the fate of their relatives;

Re-issue death certificates with the correct
date, place and cause of death;

Immediately cease pressuring or threatening
families into accepting compensation and, where requested, allow those who wish
to consider compensation time to reflect;

Allow families of victims of Abu Salim to
demonstrate freely and to freely express their opinions about the process
without intimidation or harassment from security forces.

With respect to the State Security Court:

Clarify the status of the State Security Court
in the Libyan legal system;

Ensure that a right of appeal is available
to every defendant and clarify which court is competent to hear that appeal;

Ensure that defendants have the right to a
lawyer of their choice and sufficient access to their lawyers before the court
sessions ;

Ensure that both private and state-appointed
lawyers have equal and full access to the case documents;

Make all decisions rendered by the State
Security Court publicly available, especially to the defendant and his family.

With respect to the Death Penalty:

Order an immediate moratorium on the death
penalty;

Commute all death sentences to terms of
imprisonment;

Eliminate the death penalty as a punishment
under Libyan law;

Become a party to the Second Optional
Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
which aims at the abolition of the death penalty.

To the European Union and its Member States

Before finalizing the Framework Agreement
with Libya, ensure that the Libyan government commits to improving its human
rights record and respecting the rights of prisoners, journalists and families
of victims of human rights violations;

Consistent with the EU Guidelines on Human
Rights Defenders, engage with the Libyan government to raise the rights of
human rights defenders.

To the United Nations

The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial,
Summary or Arbitrary Executions should request a visit to Libya;

The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances should request a visit to Libya;

Members of the Human Rights Council should
address the recommendations in this report to Libya during its upcoming
Universal Periodic Review session.

III. Methodology

Information about human rights violations in Libya remains
scarce due to continued state control of the media and the high risk associated
with providing information to organizations based abroad. The print media
in Libya and foreign correspondents based there rarely report on human rights
violations. Lawyers, family members and friends of individuals whose rights
have been violated often refrain from communicating with international
organizations due to fear of repercussions.

This report is based primarily on a ten-day visit to
Libya in April 2009, as well as interviews with Libyans abroad and general
research on the country. During the visit Human Rights Watch met with the
Secretary of the General People’s Committee for Justice (Ministry of
Justice); the Secretary of the General People’s Committee for Public
Security (Ministry of Interior); the head of the Internal Security Agency at
the General People’s Committee for Public Security; representatives of
the General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International
Cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the acting General Prosecutor.
The organization also met with lawyers, journalists, former prisoners and
families of prisoners. Human Rights Watch visited one prison, Abu Salim in
Tripoli, and interviewed six prisoners, briefly meeting with and confirming the
detention of an additional prisoner who refused to be interviewed. Prison
authorities refused Human Rights Watch requests to interview seven other
prisoners

Despite three hours of negotiation with the Internal
Security Agency officer in charge, Human Rights Watch was not able to secure
interviews in private with any prisoners. The interviews took place in a
courtyard where a guard hovered nearby to eavesdrop, refusing Human Rights
Watch’s request to move further away. This affects the overall value of
the testimonies. The Libyan authorities denied Human Rights Watch access
to Ain Zara, the other prison run by the Internal Security Agency.

Because of the fear of compromising the security of
interviewees, Human Rights Watch only met individuals in public places and only
initiated contact after ascertaining the willingness of those individuals to
speak to Human Rights Watch in public. Human Rights Watch conducted two
interviews with relatives of victims of human rights violations in Benghazi and
a further four telephone interviews with other relatives. Human Rights Watch
subsequently met with two brothers of prisoners who were killed in Abu Salim in
London, UK in June 2009 and in Cleveland, Ohio in August 2009.

Human Rights Watch was not visibly followed by any security officials
during the visit, but it was clear that Libyan security kept Human Rights Watch
under surveillance.

In June 2009, Human Rights Watch sent letters to the
Secretary of Justice and the Secretary of Public Security requesting further
clarification on a number of issues and outstanding questions. At the
time of publication of this report Human Rights Watch had not received a
response to these letters despite repeated attempts to follow up. The letters
are reproduced in the Appendix.

IV. Background

Libya, formally known as the Great Socialist People’s
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, is a large country, 1,759,540 square kilometers
(679,363 sq. miles), with a population of just over 6 million.[2]
The vast Sahara Desert encompasses more than 90 percent of the country, and the
majority of the population lives on the Mediterranean coast. The United Nations
Development Program ranks Libya 55out of 182 countries on its Human
Development Index.[3]

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, police and security forces
arrested hundreds of Libyans who opposed, or who the authorities feared could
oppose, the new system. Authorities labeled critics “stray dogs”
and rounded up academics, lawyers, students, journalists, Trotskyists,
communists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and others considered
“enemies of the revolution,” imprisoning or subjecting them to
enforced disappearance.[4]
Another wave of internal repression came in 1989, with the government
instituting “mass arbitrary arrest and detention, ‘disappearances,’
torture, and the death penalty.”[5]
No form of dissent was tolerated and Libya openly espoused a policy of
assassinating Libyan dissidents abroad.[6]

Libya’s international isolation intensified in the
late 1980s after a number of attacks abroad were attributed to Libyan agents.
In December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing
270 people. This was followed by the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger in
1989, killing 170.The U.S. and European governments blamed al-Gaddafi for the
attacks. In January 1992, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 731,
which ordered Libya to surrender the suspects in the two plane bombings,
cooperate with the investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families,
and cease all support for terrorism. This was followed in March 1992 by
Security Council Resolution 748, which imposed an air and arms embargo on
Libya. The embargo had a negative impact on Libya's economy. It was further
strengthened by Security Council Resolution 883 in November 1993 which imposed
a limited asset freeze and an embargo on select oil equipment.

In 1999 Libya improved its relations with Western Europe and
the United States by surrendering two Libyan nationals suspected of the Pan Am
bombing. A Scottish court in the Netherlands subsequently acquitted one of the
men and sentenced the other, `Abd al-Basit al-Megrahi, to life in prison in
2001. In a controversial decision, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice
released al-Megrahi on August 20, 2009, citing his terminal illness, and
returned him to Libya. Crowds at Tripoli airport waving Scottish flags greeted
him upon return, an orchestrated affair which was condemned as a hero’s
welcome by much of the western media and by many governments.

International
Re-integration

The turning point in Libya’s relationship with the
international community came in December 2003 when Libya announced it would
give up its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and limit its long-range
missiles.[7]
Libya said it would comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
Biological Weapons Convention, sign the International Atomic Energy Agency
Additional Protocol and adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention. In August
2003, Libya accepted "responsibility for the actions of Libyan
officials" for the Pan Am and UTA bombings and agreed to pay compensation
to the families.[8]
The US-Libya compensation deal was signed in August 2008[9]
and by November 2008 the families announced that they had received 100% of the
compensation.[10]
As one State Department official put it, the past six years have witnessed a
"gradual, step-by-step normalization" of U.S.-Libyan relations.[11]

In May 2006 then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
announced that the U.S. was “restoring full diplomatic relations with
Libya” and would remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism
where it had been since December 1979.[12] In August 2008 the
US and Libya signed a claims settlement agreement, indemnifying each other
against outstanding lawsuits for bombings attributed to Libya and US airstrikes
in the 1990s. In September 2008 Condoleezza Rice became the first U.S.
Secretary of State to visit Libya since 1953. On November 20, 2008, the US
Senate confirmed Gene Cretz as U.S. Ambassador to Libya, the first American
ambassador there in over 35 years.[13]

The thawing of relations between Libya and the U.S. has been
particularly significant in terms of counter-terrorism cooperation. Libya is
regarded as a partner in the fight against terrorism and continues to share intelligence
on militant Islamists with Western governments.[14]
Since 2004, the US has rendered a number of Libyan former CIA detainees to
Libya,[15]
five of whom Human Rights Watch was able to interview in April 2009. Human
Rights Watch was the first organization to confirm their detention in Libya. In
addition, on December 18, 2006, the US government returned Libyan citizen
Mohamed al-Rimi from Guantanamo Bay to Libya, followed by Sofian Hamoodah on
September 30, 2007.

On October 18, 2005 Libya and the United Kingdom
signed a Memorandum of Understanding “to facilitate deportation of
persons suspected of activities associated with terrorism,”[16]
which Human Rights Watch had said would put them at serious risk of torture.[17]
On April 27, 2007, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the
United Kingdom could not return two terrorism suspects to Libya due to the risk
of torture and unfair trials, a decision confirmed in appeal on April 9, 2008.[18]

Other European governments and the European Union have
also strengthened ties with Libya recently, driven by business interests and
encouraged by Libya's cooperation in combating terrorism and illegal
migration. EU sanctions against Libya were lifted in 2004 and Libya and
the EU signed a memorandum of understanding on July 23, 2007. In November 2008,
negotiations on an EU-Libya Framework Agreement covering areas such as
“political dialogue, trade, energy, migrations and environment”
began in Brussels.[19]
The negotiations are ongoing with another round scheduled to take place in
November 2009.

The resolution of one of the main sticking points in
EU-Libyan relations, the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian
doctor, also paved the way for improved relations. The health workers had been
in prison since 1999, convicted of deliberately infecting 426 children with
HIV. Their release in July 2007 came as a result of negotiations that
intensified after Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union in January of
that year. The Libyan High Judicial Council commuted the healthcare
workers’ death sentences, following a deal with the European Union to
upgrade Libyan-EU relations, which Libyan sources said included compensating
the victims’ families with a US$1 million per child.[20]

The intervention of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the
case ended with his then-wife Cecilia Sarkozy accompanying the nurses and
doctor on their flight out of Libya,[21]
Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi was invited on a state visit to France in December
2007, his first visit to Europe in 34 years.[22] He signed
billions of dollars in contracts during his stays in France and Spain on that
trip.[23]
Earlier that year Russia's then-president Vladimir Putin signed
multi-billion-dollar arms and energy deals during a visit to Libya in April,
the first by a Russian president.

Italy and Libya solidified their close relationship with a
number of agreements and joint initiatives. On August 30, 2008 both countries
signed the “The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between
the Italian Republic and Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya” which called for “intensifying” cooperation in
“fighting terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking and illegal
immigration.”[24]
In September 2008 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Libya,
pledging US$5 billion in reparations for "the damage inflicted"
during Italy's colonial rule. Berlusconi said Italy would receive increased
access to Libyan oil and gas and "fewer clandestine immigrants." On
May 15, 2009 an agreement to conduct joint Libyan-Italian naval patrols of
Libyan shores went into effect. In June 2009, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi made
his first state visit to Italy [25]
and returned the following month to attend the G8 summit in L'Aquila,
Italy. In September 2009, Human Rights Watch published a report Pushed
Back Pushed Around describing the negative impact this agreement has had on
the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.[26]

In October 2007 Libya won a seat on the UN Security Council
and it held the rotating presidency in January 2009.[27]
In February 2009 Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi became chairman
of the African Union at a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and on June 10, 2009
the General Assembly elected former Libyan secretary for African Affairs Ali
Treki President of its sixty-fourth session. On September 23, 2009,
Mu’ammar Gaddafi gave a 96-minute speech at the opening session of the UN
General Assembly in which he criticized the UN system and the Security Council.
However, he refrained from making provocative remarks towards the United States
or the West in general, avoiding sensitive subjects such as the return of
Megrahi, which indicates a desire on his part to maintain good relations with
the West.

Libya is party to the seven core international human rights
treaties, although not all of

their optional protocols. It ratified the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1976, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1989, the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading

Treatment or Punishment (CAT) in 1989, the African Charter
on Human and Peoples' Rights in 1986, and the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child in 2003. Libya has taken strong positions against signing
the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court with Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi calling the latter
a “new world terrorism.”[28]

Reform Initiatives

Human rights observers have, for years, criticized the
Libyan penal code for violating freedom of expression and association and for
excessively heavy sentences.[29]
The Libyan authorities first announced their intention to amend the penal code
in 2003. Then-Secretary of Justice `Ali `Umar Abu Bakr told Human Rights Watch
in May 2005 that by the end of that year the experts were due to submit a new
penal code to the Basic People’s Congresses for debate.[30] A
draft obtained by Amnesty International in 2004 contained many articles that
were inconsistent with Libya’s obligations under international human
rights law. Vague terms in some articles, such as “spreading
rumors,” “insult,” and “harming the reputation of the country,”
appeared as if they could lead to the death penalty being imposed for the
peaceful expression of political views.[31] In October
2005, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi spoke before the Higher Judicial Council
calling for a revision of the penal code; “I want the men and women of
Libya to create their penal code so that this is the first time that a people
creates its own penal code which will then run it.”[32]

Chief Justice of the Libyan Supreme Court, Dr. Abdulrahman
Tuta, told Human Rights Watch in April 2009 that he chaired a committee
composed of judges, lawyers and academics which drafted a new penal code.[33]
The Secretary of Justice Mostafa Abdeljalil told Human Rights Watch that the
draft penal code would be formally presented in the summer of 2009 to the Basic
People’s Congresses for discussion. This would be the first step
toward its adoption but as of the time of this writing this has yet to take
place. [34]
Under Libya’s political system, each congress may approve or reject the
proposal, or approve it with reservations. The code will come into force if
approved by the General People’s Congress.

At a rare public meeting at the Tripoli Bar Association in
April 2008, a number of Libyan lawyers openly criticized the latest version of
the draft penal code for its continued repression of basic freedoms and the
pervasiveness of the death penalty.[35]
In January 2009, Human Rights Watch received the latest version of the draft
penal code and in June 2009 sent the Libyan authorities its comments and
recommendations on the proposed provisions to bring them into compliance with
international human rights law. The new draft limits the number of provisions
providing for the death penalty and reduces many of the sentences but retains
provisions criminalizing freedom of expression and association. [36]

Even the General People’s Committee for Public
Security seems aware of the need to evolve with the times; its website now has
a form for “complaints to remedy any mistakes.”[37]
The Libyan Secretary of Public Security, General Abdelfattah al-Obeidi, sought
to assure Human Rights Watch that he had issued a decision last year ordering
all officers not to hit or humiliate citizens in any way during the performance
of their duties. Yet he was unable to provide Human Rights Watch with any
information on the number of complaints received about such treatment or the
number of cases investigated by his ministry.[38] No information is
available on the number of officers prosecuted but a lawyer told Human Rights
Watch that the number is likely to be very low since “the General
Prosecutor can’t interrogate any officer without authorization from the
Secretary of Public Security and he always refuses.”[39]

Another sign that the General People’s Committee for
Public Security recognizes the need to show some effort towards displaying
awareness of human rights is the apparent establishment of human rights
training. In April 2009, Colonel Kamal El Dib told Human Rights Watch about the
human rights training programs he began running at the General People’s
Committee for Public Security in 2004. He said up to 60,000 officers have been
trained on issues including “human rights concepts, non-discrimination,
security and legitimacy, the torture convention, how the police should deal
with citizens and the Great Green Charter on Human Rights.”[40]
He said that this was a capacity-building project and that Libya had brought in
expert trainers from the UK, the US and Egypt. Human Rights Watch could
not verify the extent of this program or evaluate its content. While the impact
of human rights training is often difficult to assess, especially where there
is a culture of impunity for violations, it shows awareness on the part of the
General People’s Committee for Public Security of the need to have some
form of human rights program on display.

Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the son of Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi, is generally perceived as the leader or sometimes spokesperson for
the “reformist” groups in Libyan government. His speeches in August
to Libyan youth associations had become the platform for reform. He used these
speeches to announce plans to draft a new constitution, a radical suggestion in
the context of his father’s vision of direct democracy. In August 2007
his speech “Libya - Truth for All” spoke candidly of some of the
human rights violations of the past and of the right of families to learn about
what had happened to their disappeared relatives.[41]
On August 22, 2008, however, Saif al-Islam announced that he was retiring from
political life and would confine himself to his charitable activities through
his foundation.[42]
Some analysts interpreted this as a sign of his receding power internally and
therefore also that of the so-called reformist members of government. On
October 12, however, two months after he escorted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back to
Libya, the People’s Leadership Committees appointed Saif al-Islam
al-Gaddafi as their general coordinator, effectively making him the second most
important man in the country. The week before, Libyan Leader Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi had asked the People’s Leadership Committees to find an
official position for his son Saif to “allow him to implement
reforms.”[43]

V. Freedom of Expression

“Overall, it’s true, we have more
freedom of expression. Before, we wouldn’t even try to express ourselves.
Now we’re taking risks.”

—Libyan journalist, Tripoli, April 2009

“Things are much better but there
can be a regression because there is no liberalization in the law.”

—Libyan journalist, Tripoli, April 2009

“The four red lines are the application
of Islamic law, the Koran and its requirements, security and stability of
Libya, its territorial integrity and Mu’ammar Gaddafi.”

—Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, August 2007

The past five years have witnessed a gradual opening of a
new, still vulnerable but nevertheless measurable, space for freedom of
expression. The government retains control over most of the media in Libya and
monitors and censors the new private media. The establishment of two
private newspapers and a satellite TV station in August 2007 was initially
embraced by journalists with great enthusiasm as they explored new boundaries
of critical speech. Later, however, as government pushed back, journalists
became more cautious and less optimistic about the sustainability of this
freedom. The continued existence of repressive laws, which criminalize free
speech, casts a heavy shadow over the press. The Press Prosecutor, one of
Libya’s specialized prosecutors who also covers narcotics, the General
Prosecutor and the State Security prosecutors have been playing an increasingly
active role by initiating criminal investigations into cases where complaints
of slander were brought against journalists. Many people Human Rights Watch met
argued that there have been small but tangible developments in Libya over the
past 5 years, with one lawyer telling Human Rights Watch “I
couldn’t have spoken to you in 2005 the way I can today.”[44]

The establishment of two new private newspapers Oea[45]and
Quryna[46]
on August 20, 2007 created new avenues for a certain amount of criticism of
officials which would have been unthinkable in previous years. Both newspapers
are owned by Al Ghad, a company closely affiliated to Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, which also established
satellite TV station Al Libeyya. Libyan authorities nationalized the latter
in June 2009 and a new TV station Al Wasat. Articles have appeared
criticizing the General Prosecutor for corruption, violating the law and
failing to investigate complaints and the Benghazi local authorities for
corruption.[47]
On September 3, 2009, lawyer Mohamed Allagi wrote an article in Oea
criticizing the lack of judicial independence in Libya.[48]
These newspapers act as mouthpieces for the so-called ‘reform’
groups closely affiliated with Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi’s political
position, but the fact that these criticisms have been voiced in a public forum
reflects the existence of some tolerance towards limited political
diversity.

Independent Libyan news websites based abroad, such as
Libya Al Youm, Al Manara and Jeel Libya, which publish information
that is critical of the government, are accessible in Libya and their
correspondents are allowed to operate, though not without harassment. Libya
Al Youm, an independent United Kingdom-based news website, is one of the
primary references for anyone seeking news about what happens in Libya. Despite
the fact that it frequently publishes articles critical of the government and
news on the most sensitive of issues such as the Abu Salim demonstrations, it
maintains two correspondents in Libya, based in Tripoli and Benghazi,
respectively. The Tripoli correspondent, Fathi Ben Eissa, told Human
Rights Watch that he has a press card and is able to interview Libyan officials
and go to high-level press conferences despite the fact that Libya al-Youm
is not registered in Libya and continues to publish articles critical of the
political system and the authorities.[49]

On November 22, 2008 Agence France-Press was the first
global news agency to formally open a bureau in Tripoli with an accredited
foreign correspondent and on February 24, 2009 international newspapers and
magazines such as the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek became
available for sale in Libya for the first time in a quarter of a century.

These changes have occurred in spite of the continued repressive
legal framework and take on more significance when viewed in that context
because journalists take significant risks by writing critically of government
policies and abuses. The 1969 Constitutional Proclamation on December which
guaranteed some rights, such as the right to work, health care and education,
provides for freedom of opinion only “within the limits of public
interest and the principles of the Revolution.”[50]
Article 178 of the Libyan penal code orders life imprisonment for the dissemination
of information considered to “tarnish [the country’s] reputation or
undermine confidence in it abroad.” Article 207 imposes the death penalty
for “whoever spreads within the country, by whatever means, theories or
principles aiming to change the basic principles of the Constitution or the
fundamental structures of the social system or to overthrow the state’s
political, social or economic structures or destroy any of the fundamental
structures of the social system using violence, terrorism or any other unlawful
means.” There are still political prisoners imprisoned under these
provisions which criminalize free speech, such as the case of Abdelnasser
al-Rabbasi discussed below in Section VII.

In a speech in August 2007, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi spoke openly
of the limits to freedom of expression in Libya identifying four “red
lines” which are “the application of Islamic law, the Koran and its
requirements, security and stability of Libya, its territorial integrity and
Mu’ammar Gaddafi.”[51]
The existence of these four lines was confirmed to Human Rights Watch by
journalists and by officials such as the acting General Prosecutor. [52]
In November 2008, an unidentified caller on a live program on Benghazi Local
Radio criticized Saif al-Islam saying “Who is this Saif al-Islam on whose
behalf Libyan youth are demonstrating? And where were they when people were
being publicly executed in the 1980s?”[53] As a result of
this call, Younis al-Magbari, the director for Press and Broadcasting at the
General People’s Committee for Media and Culture, ordered disciplinary
measures to be taken against the broadcaster and producer of the program. In an
interview to Al Jazeera, however, al-Magbari said he’d revoked
that decision and apologized to the journalists. This came after the
intervention of Saif al-Islam who said that since he was not a “red
line” he could be criticized.[54]
As one journalist told Human Rights Watch “the problem is that you can
never tell when a particular line is red.”[55]

Human Rights Watch met with a group of journalists at the
Tripoli Journalists’ Association, the largest section of the
Journalists’ Syndicate, to discuss the state of freedom of expression in
Libya. One journalist told Human Rights Watch that “there is a margin of
freedom, but it’s not real freedom because it depends on the mood of the
ministers. This freedom goes up and down.”[56]
Another journalist interjected that “there are clear boundaries, and you
lose your job if you go beyond them, or they will freeze your salary.”[57]
The journalists, editors and even the acting General Prosecutor with whom Human
Rights Watch met all spoke matter-of-factly about the four “red
lines” identified by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi in August 2007.
Nevertheless, one journalist said that “overall, it’s true, we have
a bit more freedom of expression. Before, we wouldn’t even try to express
ourselves. Now we’re taking risks.”[58]

Prosecution of
Journalists

This limited expansion of freedom of the press has brought
with it a corresponding increase in the number of defamation claims brought
against journalists. Overly broad provisions in the penal code
criminalize free speech. Under the penal code and the 1972 press
law, a defamation conviction carries a sentence of imprisonment, which cements
journalists’ tendency towards self-censorship.

For example, journalist Tarek el-Houny, who writes for Quryna,
wrote an article entitled “The Governor Is Not Governing”
criticizing the lack of metal coins available in the country as a result of
policies by the central bank of Libya. On November 30, 2008 the Press
Prosecutor summoned him on charges of defamation after a complaint was filed by
the central bank governor, Farahat Ben Qaddara, who claimed the article was
slanderous. Tarek el-Houny told Human Rights Watch that he had criticized the
financial policies of the governor and not the man himself but the prosecutor
had questioned him about his article and subsequently told him to present
himself once a week before the office of the prosecutor to sign in.[59]
After two months of this he discovered that his case had been brought before a
court. The trial was suspended after the intervention of Saif al-Islam
al-Gaddafi. El-Houny told Human Rights Watch that such an experience would
increase self-censorship even more, saying “this experience made me very
nervous. I now think twice about every line I write and am very
cautious.”[60]

On January 11, 2009, the State Security Prosecutor summoned
Garyounis University political science professor Fathi el Baaga on charges of
“incitement against the Jamahireya system” for publishing an
article on May 5, 2007 in Quryna entitled “Where is Libya
Heading?” which criticized the current political system in Libya.[61]
He was released on bail on condition he sign in at the Benghazi Press
Prosecutor’s office once a week. On January 16, Libya Al Youm reported
that Public Prosecutor Mohamed al-Misrati dropped all the charges against him
after the intervention of Saif el Islam al-Gaddafi.[62]

On October 21, 2009, Mohamed al-Sareet, a Libyan journalist,
wrote on Jeel Libya, an independent news website based in London, about
a rare demonstration in Benghazi by women who live in a state-run care
residence for women and girls who were orphaned as children, calling for an end
to sexual harassment they said they had experienced in the center. The
demonstrators were also demanding the return of the center's former director.
On October 22, local police summoned al-Sareet to the Hadaek police station for
questioning. On October 26, the General Prosecutor's Office summoned him for further
questioning and charged him with criminal defamation, which carries a prison
sentence. Jeel Libya's director told Human Rights Watch that al-Sareet
had received threats to burn down his house to intimidate him into retracting
his article.[63]
On October 29, however, the General Prosecutor’s office opened an
investigation into the claims and on October 31 he charged the former head of
the residence with sexual harassment. The Gaddafi Foundation also met with
al-Sareet and assured him that the charges against him would be dropped.

Libya’s
International Obligations and Libyan Law

The government’s strict control of the media
contradicts Libya’s obligations under international law. Article 9 of the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, ratified by Libya in 1986,
guarantees that, “[e]very individual shall have the right to receive
information,” and that “every individual shall have the right to
express and disseminate his opinions within the law.” Article 19 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Libya is a state
party, sets out minimum international standards for freedom of expression. It
states: “Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without
interference; Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this
right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print,
in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”[64]
Any limitations to this right must be necessary, proportionate and established
by law.

Applicable Libyan law is far from meeting international
standards. The country’s Constitutional Declaration of 1969 includes a
broadly worded limitation clause that opens the door to abuse. It states:
“Freedom of opinion is guaranteed within the limits of public interest
and the principles of the Revolution.”[65] The Great Green
Charter for Human Rights, passed in 1988, does not explicitly enshrine the
principle of free speech or the right to information. Law 20, On Enhancing
Freedom, adopted in 1991, states that “every citizen has the right to
openly express his thoughts and opinions in the People’s Congresses and
in the Jamahiriya [mass] media,” unless “he uses [that right] in
violation of the people’s authority or for personal motives.”[66]

The 2009 proposed draft penal code contains some overall
improvement but still retains provisions that violate freedom of expression.
Article 198 states that offending a public official shall be punishable by
imprisonment. Article 155 provides for imprisonment for insulting
Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi and Article 167 provides for life imprisonment for
promoting principles with the aim of changing the Jamahiriya system using
illegal means. The restrictions on freedom of expression found in
Articles 155, 156, 159, 167, 198 and 230 go beyond what is permitted under
international law and create an atmosphere which stifles free speech and
criticism. The right to criticize one’s government has particularly high
priority in the protections of international law because it is precisely one of
the rights most likely to be met with harassment, abuse, and denial by
governments. The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa,
adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in 2002, says
states shall ensure their laws on defamation comply with the standard that
“public figures shall be required to tolerate a greater degree of
criticism.”[67]

VI. Freedom of Assembly and Association

“The state has swallowed up civil
society and will not give space to human rights defenders.”

—Libyan lawyer, April 22, 2009

There is virtually no freedom of assembly or association in
Libya because the concept of an independent civil society goes directly against
Gaddafi’s theory of government by the masses without intermediary.[68]
Law 71 bans any group activity opposing the ideology of the 1969 revolution and
imposes the death penalty on those who form, join or support such groups.

Freedom of Assembly

Freedom of assembly is severely restricted in Libya. On June
29, the General People’s Committee issued a decision (312/2009) requiring
30-day advance approval from a newly established government committee to hold
any meeting or event, and requiring the meeting organizers to provide a list of
all participants and the issues to be discussed. Under international law, these
requirements do not meet the standard of a necessary or proportionate
limitation to freedom of assembly and association, for example as in Articles
10 and 11 of the African Charter.

Attempting to organize a demonstration remains
illegal. In February 2007 Libyan security agents arrested 14 organizers of a
planned peaceful demonstration intended to commemorate the anniversary of a
violent crackdown on demonstrators in Benghazi. Security forces detained them
incommunicado in Ain Zara and al-Al-Jdaida prisons until June 24, 2007 when
they came before a court to face charges of "attempting to overthrow the
political system" and "communication with enemy powers.”[69]
Increasingly, however, some demonstrations are taking place despite these
restrictions. In Benghazi, families of a group of prisoners killed in Abu Salim
prison have held a number of public demonstrations. Although security officials
continue to harass and intimidate those taking part in the demonstrations, the
fact that they have taken place at all and that they have been covered in the
media is unprecedented. (see Section IX Unprecedented Activism)

No Independent
Nongovernmental Organizations

Libya has no independent nongovernmental organizations. The
government has refused to allow independent journalists' and lawyers'
organizations. Law 19, "On Associations," requires a political body
to approve all such organizations, does not allow appeals against negative decisions
and allows for continuous governmental interference in the running of the
organization. If the organization plans to work country-wide, its application
goes to the

secretariat of the General People’s Congress.[70]
If the proposed work is limited to a governorate, the application goes to the
People’s Congress of that governorate. If the

work is international, it goes to the whole General
People’s Committee. The law itself allows the government to revoke the
authorization of an association at any time without needing to provide
justification.

There are a number of semi-official organizations that do
charitable work, providing services and organizing seminars, but none that
publicly take critical stances against the government. The only organizations
that do human rights work, the most sensitive area of all in Libya, are only
able to do so because they derive their political standing from their personal
affiliation with the regime. In effect, they perform the role of human rights
commissions or ombudsmen that are part of the government but there are clear
limits to what issues they are willing to take up and how much pressure they
are willing to exert at any given time.

The main organization able to do human rights work in Libya
is the Human Rights Society of the Gaddafi International Charity and
Development Foundation (GDF), chaired by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, a son of
Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi. It has intervened in a number of cases to
secure the release of political prisoners or facilitate the return of Libyan
nationals.[71]
It has at times taken public stances against the authorities, such as its
criticism of the General Prosecutor over the arrest of attorney Gum’a
Atiga, former Secretary of the GDF’s Human Rights Society. The GDF
“strongly condemn[ed] this arbitrary action and request[ed] the
Secretariat of the General People's Congress to hold accountable those who
caused the arrest of the person concerned and to proceed to his release as soon
as possible.”[72]
On many other issues, though, it treads very cautiously and prefers to try to
address cases and concerns in a non-public manner. With Saif al-Islam’s
appointment in October 2009 as General Coordinator of the People’s
Leadership Committees, the governmental nature of the Gaddafi Foundation is solidified.

Another organization that does some work on human rights is
Waatasemu. Chaired by Aisha al-Gaddafi, a lawyer and the daughter of Colonel
Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, Waatasemu has intervened in death penalty cases,
successfully arranging for the payment of blood money to reduce the sentence to
life imprisonment.[73]
(see Section XI below) The International Organization for Peace, Care and
Relief (IOPCR), run by Khaled Hamedi, the son of a member of the Revolutionary
Command Council, is the only organization able to access migrant detention
centers.[74]
It was only on the basis of a 2008 agreement with IOPCR that the office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was able to gain access
to Misrata to interview asylum seekers. [75]

All professional syndicates and trade unions in Libya are
state-controlled. However, within the Bar Association and the
Journalists’ Syndicate there are a number of individuals who express
independent views and take positions critical of the government but try to work
within the existing structures. However, opportunities remain limited. As one
lawyer told Human Rights Watch “the state regards us with suspicion at
the Tripoli Bar Association because we are the biggest.”[76]
Despite this, the lawyers at the Tripoli Bar Association have been trying to
take an increasingly active role in monitoring and upholding human rights. The
lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they recently established a fact-finding
committee which had requested access to Ain Zara prison in April 2009 but the
Internal Security Agency had refused. They remain hopeful of eventually being
granted access since a human rights committee affiliated with the Bar
Association had visited a prison in 1998.[77]

On April 22, 2008 the Tripoli Bar Association held a seminar
to discuss the new draft penal code. The lawyers rejected the draft calling for
its revision and for a more inclusive consultation process.[78]
One lawyer told Human Rights Watch “everything you wrote in your last
report [Words to Deeds 2006] about the repressive legal framework still
applies.”[79]

Freedom of Association
Criminalized

The new draft penal code retains provisions that violate
freedom of association. Article 166 criminalizes the establishment of any
organization that is “against the Jamahiriya system” or
“threatening its popular authority”, without further defining what
that would include. Article 167 criminalizes all those who promote
“changing the Jamahiriya system”, although it appears to be limited
to those who do so “using violence or other illegal instruments.”
These provisions are overly broad, not specifically defining the crime to allow
for legal certainty, and they also restrict the rights of people to form
associations or advocate for their views. As it stands, these provisions
would encompass organizations or groups which undertake criticism of public
policies by the government, as well as commentary on the human rights
situation. They could even criminalize research institutes that produce
findings that are critical of governmental policy. Similarly,
Article 169 seeks to limit the freedom of Libyans to join or establish
international organizations unless they receive permission from the government,
without establishing the criteria for such permission. Under international law,
while a government may require notification of the establishment of an
association, requiring governmental permission to establish or join an
association should be on the basis of criteria that are clear, objective and
appealable.

Attempting to set up a human rights organization remains
very risky, as the case of Shukri Sahil shows.In March
2004, Libyan businessman Shukri Sahil, together with some friends, decided to
try to establish a human rights organization in Libya and started informal
consultations about this with friends and contacts in Libya. His friends
informed him that he would need to gain authorization from the Office of
External Security, so he requested a meeting with that office in May 2004.
Shukri Sahil told Human Rights Watch that the security officer he spoke to
reacted with great anger when he told him that he wanted to set up an
organization, accusing him of having “political ambitions” and
being a “very dangerous person.” Shukri Sahil believes that all the
subsequent harassment he suffered from state security were related to this
initial incident.[80]

Security forces arrested Shukri Sahil on 20
May 2004 and detained him in solitary confinement in the External Security
prison for 13 months. He told Human Rights Watch that security officers
tortured him every day for two weeks and every two-to-three days for the
following three weeks. They beat him about the body, and especially on the
soles of his feet (falaka) and brought a dog to attack him. In
March 2005 he went before a judge for the first time. The judge charged
him with violating Law 71, which bans any group activity based on a
political ideology opposed to the principles of the 1969 al-Fateh Revolution. In June 2005, the authorities transferred him to Abu Salim prison,
where they kept him in solitary confinement for two months.[81]
His trial before the State Security Court is described below in Section X.

The 2008 Attempt to
Establish a Human Rights Organization

The most significant attempt to set up an independent human
rights organization came in February 2008, when a group of lawyers, journalists
and other Libyan professionals established two nongovernmental organizations
called the Centre for Democracy and the Association for Justice and Human
Rights. Their goals included spreading democratic values and making
recommendations for legal reform to promote democratic activities and human
rights.[82]

On March 17, 2008, the 90 founding members of the
Association for Justice and Human Rights sent their application for
registration to the General People’s Committee for Social Affairs. The
Centre for Democracy sent its application to the General People’s
Committee for Social Affairs on May 4, 2008, and on May 25 the NGO Directorate
at the General People’s Committee for Social Affairs sent them a letter
confirming approval of the application.[83] On May
4 Libya Al Youm reported that the NGO Directorate had sent the list of
members of both organizations to the Internal Security Agency[84]
and on May 19 the founding members announced that the Agency had stipulated the
removal of 12 members of the Association for Justice from the list before
allowing the organization to be established. The 12 members included
former political prisoners, including Gum’a Atiga, a lawyer and former
secretary of the Human Rights Society at the Gaddafi Foundation. In fact, Law
19 does not prescribe a role for Internal Security Agency approval in the
establishment of organizations, stating in Article Six that “the
establishment of an association on a national level occurs by decision of the
General People’s Committee.” The head of Internal Security,
Col. Al-Tohamy Khaled, denied that his agency had intervened, telling Human
Rights Watch that “the Internal Security Agency does not have the right
to intervene in the law and request certain members to be removed but it does
have a duty to investigate the background of each individual and to check if
they have a record.”[85]

On June 10, the NGO Directorate at the General
People’s Committee for Social Affairs revoked its initial authorization
and officially refused the applications for registration of the Centre for
Democracy and the Association for Justice and Human Rights, a move lawyers
attributed to the intervention of the Internal Security Agency.[86]

Lawyer Dhaw al-Mansuri, President of the Centre for
Democracy, said he was stopped on June 30, 2008 at around 8 pm, in the street
near his office by men in plainclothes, forced into a car, blindfolded,
handcuffed and driven out of the city to an unknown location. He was
beaten and told to abandon the attempt to set up the Centre for Democracy. On
July 6, 2008 the Tripoli Bar Association held an emergency meeting to discuss
the kidnapping.[87]
The Bar Association sent a public letter to the Secretary of Justice and to
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, as chairman of the Gaddafi Foundation, protesting
this incident and calling for an investigation. The head of Internal Security,
Al-Tohamy Khaled, told Human Rights Watch that an investigation into the
incident was still underway. However, he said that he didn’t believe the
incident had occurred, saying “who is this Dhaw that the state would care
about? I do not think that security would do that.” [88]

Shortly after the incident, the group abandoned their
attempt to establish the two new organizations. As one lawyer put it, “This
door, which was opened after Saif al-Islam’s speech in August 2006, was
now closed.”[89]

Libya’s
International Obligations

As party to the African Charter on Human and People’s
Rights, Libya is under an obligation to provide the right to free association,
set out in Article 10. This is reflected in Article 22 of the ICCPR which
further stipulates that any limitation must be “necessary in a democratic
society.” “Necessary” restrictions must also be proportionate:
that is, carefully balanced against the specific reason for the restriction
being put in place.[90]The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly highlighted the importance
of proportionality.[91]In applying a limitation, a government should use no more restrictive
means than is absolutely required. The African Commission has found
“freedom of association is enunciated as an individual right and is first
and foremost a duty for the State to abstain from interfering with the free
formation of associations.”[92]

These international obligations are also reflected in
Article 6 of the Great Green Charter for Human Rights which says Libyans are
free to form “associations, trade unions and leagues in order to defend
their professional interests,” although it does not address associations that
deal with social or political themes. According to Article 9 of the Law on
Enhancing Freedom, “Citizens are free to establish and join trade unions,
professional and social federations and leagues and charitable associations in
order to protect their interests or achieve the legitimate objectives for which
those institutions have been established.”

VII. Violations by the Internal Security Agency

“What I want is to know what happened
to my father. If he is alive, I wish to speak with him and see him. If he has
broken the law, he ought to be tried and given a chance to defend himself. And
if he is dead, then I want to know how, where and when it happened. I want a
date, a detailed account and the location of his body.”[93]

—Hisham Matar, July 2006

The structure, mandate and reporting lines of Libya’s
various security agencies remain opaque, primarily because these institutions
have a great deal of informal political power, and function without
accountability or transparency. The Internal Security Agency and External
Security Agency are formally under the authority of the General People’s
Committee for Public Security.

The only publicly available statistics on Libya’s
prison population date from June 2007 and indicate there were 12,748 prisoners
distributed among 36 institutions.[94]
These prisons fall under the jurisdiction of the General People’s
Committee for Justice. However, the two most notorious prisons, Abu Salim and
Ain Zara, known for housing political prisoners for years without trial, do not
fall under the jurisdiction of the General People’s Committee for Justice
but under the Internal Security Agency.[95]

Since the authorities refuse to disclose any information,
little is known about the prison populations of Abu Salim and Ain Zara. The
only information comes from former prisoners who often are too intimidated to
discuss their experiences. During its April 2009 trip to Libya, Human Rights
Watch visited Abu Salim prison in Tripoli and was given a tour of the prison
clinic.[96]
When Human Rights Watch met with the Deputy Director of Internal Security in
charge of the prison, and asked him about the prison population, he responded
that he “did not know” how many prisoners were in Abu Salim because
“it changed on a daily basis.”[97] When Human Rights
Watch followed up by asking how many meals were prepared daily, he responded
“we always make extra meals so that there is more than enough.”[98]
His response is typical of the lack of transparency surrounding the Internal
Security Agency.

Libyan prisons still contain hundreds of political prisoners
who have not engaged in violent acts or advocated violence. Many of those
imprisoned in Abu Salim belong to Islamist groups. Although some have advocated
violence, many have not and none have received fair trials. Over the past two
years, Libyan authorities have released 238 prisoners, 40 in March and most
recently 88 in October. Overall, 136 of these prisoners were members of the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, imprisoned after trials before the
People’s Court or the State Security Court without due process for
“membership in an illegal organization.” (see Section X.)

Arbitrary Detention

Hundreds of prisoners are detained by the Internal Security
Agency without any legal basis. Over the past few years, an unprecedented
confrontation between the General People’s Committee for Justice and the
General People’s Committee for Public Security has developed over the
failure of Internal Security to implement the decisions of Libyan courts.
The Internal Security Agency continues to refuse to release from Abu Salim and
Ain Zara prisons, prisoners who either have been acquitted by courts or who
have already served their court- imposed sentences. Libyan Secretary of Justice
Mostafa Abdeljalil confirmed to Human Rights Watch that “at least
200” prisoners who either had been acquitted or had served their
sentences remain in Abu Salim and Ain Zara. [99] On November 2,
2009, in an interview with Oea, Secretary for Justice Mostafa Abdeljelil
said that there were “more than 500 prisoners who were acquitted by
courts in June 2008 and are yet to be released” and criticized the
security services for failing to respect court decisions.[100]

Secretary Abdeljalil told Human Rights Watch “these
prisons are affiliated to Internal Security and the Ministry of Justice has no
jurisdiction over them. The General Prosecutor’s office has ordered their
release but this has not occurred ... the General Prosecutor cannot initiate an
investigation into their continued detention.”[101]
The head of the Internal Security Agency, Al-Tohamy Khaled, denied that there
are any such prisoners. He told Human Rights Watch that the acquittal decisions
issued in favor of some prisoners were now being appealed before the High
Court. He said prisoners who had served their sentences remained imprisoned
because the prosecutor had brought new charges against them.[102]

Human Rights Watch has obtained a copy of a leaked letter
written by the Secretary of Justice on June 26, 2008, addressed to the General
Secretary (Prime Minister), which was also published on various Libyan
websites. The letter stated that 130 of the group of 189 defendants in the case
of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, criminal case No. 120 of 1998, all of
whom had been imprisoned since 1995, should be released:

The court ruled on June 16, 2008 to sentence 19 of them to
death by firing squad, 50 of them to life imprisonment, 15 others to sentences
ranging between 10 and 15 years and acquitting 130 defendants of all charges.
On this basis the State Security Prosecutor ordered the release of all those
defendants found innocent and those who had already served the period of their
sentence, but Internal Security has not implemented this decision to this day.[103]

This publicized stance by the Secretary of Justice seems to have
emboldened relatives of prisoners to publicly call for their release. On June
14, 2009, an Al Jazeera article quoted Saleh al Bakkoush, father of
prisoner Anis Al Bakkoush, [104]
calling for the release of his son, imprisoned since 1999 and subsequently acquitted
of all charges by a court, who remains in Ain Zara prison. Another family
member told Human Rights Watch “my brother was found innocent in 2005 by
the Tripoli specialized court but he is still in Abu Salim. We keep hoping he
will be released.”[105]

Below are some examples of prisoners who are arbitrarily
detained about whose cases Human Rights Watch was able to obtain information.
Given the lack of transparency and secrecy of the system, it is extremely
difficult to get detailed information about individual cases.

Mahmoud Boushima

Mahmoud Boushima, a Libyan national born in
1962, returned to Libya on July 17, 2005 after receiving assurances from the
Gaddafi Foundation that Libyan security officals would not arrest him upon his
return. He had been living in the United Kingdom with his family since
1981 and held a UK passport. On July 28, 2005, Internal Security forces
arrested and imprisoned him in Abu Salim. The State Security Prosecutor
then charged him with membership in an illegal organization, in this case the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, under Article 206 of the penal code and Articles
2,3 and 4 of Law 71. On March 18, 2006 the specialized court of appeal (Mahkama
Takhasusiyya) acquitted him in case No. 411/2005. The Prosecutor appealed
this decision on April 22, 2006 and on February 20, 2007, the court ruled again
in Boushima’s favour. His case eventually came before the Supreme
Court, which ruled in his favour on March 30, 2008. He remains in Abu Salim
prison.

His brother, who is based in Europe, told
Human Rights Watch that Boushima is in poor health, suffering from asthma,
Hepatitis B and depression. For eleven months, the family was refused
permission to visit him. Between December 2006 and October 2007 guards turned
them away at the gates of the prison without explanation.

Abdellatif Al-Raqoubi

Internal Security officers arrested Abdellatif al-Raqoubi,
born 1975,on June 19, 2006 in Sabha while on his way to work. His
family says they had no news of him or where he was detained for nearly a year.
In May 2007, local authorities informed them that he had been arrested by the
Heresy-Fighters (zandaqa ), the security branch dealing with suspected
Islamists, and that he was in Abu Salim prison.

Al-Raqoubi first appeared before a court on May 15, 2007, on
charges of insulting Leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi and possession of
weapons. The evidence against al-Raqoubi was the confessions of two other
defendants who later told the judge that they had signed them under torture. On
June 18, 2008, the State Security Court acquitted him along with 19 others in
Case No. 314. The Internal Security Agency released al-Raqoubi from Abu
Salim prison on October 15, 2009.

The continued detention of these prisoners is a violation of
Article 9 of the ICCPR which states that “no one shall be deprived of his
liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are
established by law”, as well as Article 6 of the African Charter. The
failure to release also violates Article 434 of the Libyan Penal code on the
deprivation of liberty.

The continued detention of these prisoners in the absence of
a court order authorizing it constitutes arbitrary detention and amounts to a
violation of Article 9 of the ICCPR. It is also a violation of article 434 of
the Libyan Penal code on deprivation of liberty.

Political Prisoners

“We don’t have any prisoners of
conscience, we only have terrorists.”

—Head of Internal Security Col. Al-Tohamy Khaled,
April 25, 2009

Libyan prisons still contain hundreds of prisoners,
sentenced after unfair trials, for expression of their political views. Libya’s
penal code and Law 71 criminalize activities protected by freedom of expression
and freedom of association under international law. Earlier this year, Libya
released the last of a group of 14 prisoners arrested for organizing a
demonstration.[106]
Human Rights Watch has written to the Libyan authorities to ask how many
individuals remain imprisoned as a result of these provisions but at the time
of publication has yet to receive a response. Because of the general lack of
transparency surrounding the prisons controlled by the Internal Security Agency
and the practice of incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance, it is
impossible to assess how many political prisoners remain imprisoned in Libya.
Two cases described below are typical of the policy of the Libyan authorities
towards any expression of dissent. The case of Fathi al-Jahmi, one of the
most prominent political prisoners, is addressed below and shows the inherent cruelty
in the continued detention of such prisoners.

Abdelnasser al-Rabbasi

“I was imprisoned because of matters
the Leader now says himself, criticizing the situation in my country. He now
criticizes corruption and the economic situation. So I don’t know
why I was imprisoned. I did not carry a gun, I carried a pen.”

Abdelnasser al-Rabbasi, 43, was a social security worker in
Bani Walid, who also wrote on a freelance basis. One day he
sent the Arab Times, a US-based newspaper, a short story, entitled
Chaos, Corruption and the Suicide of the Mind in Libya (Al Fawda Al
Fawda, Al Fasad Al Fasad, wa Entihar Al Aql fi Libya maa Qeyam Okhra), a
play on the words of the title of a piece written by Colonel Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi. On January 3, 2003, Internal Security officers in plainclothes
arrested him at his home and detained him incommunicado for six months.

I was writing about corruption and human rights. I
wrote about economic corruption in a novel. On the 18th of
August 2003 I was sentenced to 15 years. I might just as well have
carried a gun or blown myself up with explosives. I had no lawyer, nothing of
that sort. I don’t have anything to hide. I’m not part of any group
or anything like that. All I had at home were some papers. I have
no objection to you publicizing these events. I have nothing to lose.

Al Karama, a Geneva-based human rights organization,
submitted his case to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in
2005 found that “the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Abdenacer [sic.]
Younes Meftah Al Rabassi is arbitrary, being in contravention of articles 14
and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”[107]

On July 28, 2003, the People’s Court, a court
notorious for politically-motivated trials, sentenced al-Rabbasi to 15 years
imprisonment for “dishonoring the guide of the revolution”
(Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi), under article 164 of the penal code. The General
People’s Congress abolished the People’s Court on January 12, 2005
and Libyan justice officials said that cases under review at the time were
transferred to regular criminal courts.[108] Human
Rights Watch has called on the government to retry all cases judged in the
People’s Court due to systematic due-process violations in the court,
such as long periods of pre-trial detention and limited access to a lawyer.[109]
As of September 2009, no court has reviewed Abdelnasser al-Rabbasi’s
case.

Mahmud Matar

Security officials arrested Mahmud Matar, along with his two
nephews Saleh and Ali Abdel Salam Eshnaqet, in March 1990 and detained them in
Abu Salim prison. For the first two years, prison authorities detained Matar in
isolated confinement. More than 11 years after his arrest, the People’s
Prosecutor charged him and nine others under Law 71 with membership in an
illegal organization whose principles are against the Fateh revolution and with
the possession of weapons under the penal code. On February 5, 2002, the
Permanent Military Court sentenced Matar along with Saleh and Ali Ashneqat and
Hamed Said Khanfoor to life imprisonment, acquitted one, and the remaining five
were given terms between 10-12 years. The trial was marred by a number of
procedural irregularities. During the trial, defense lawyers argued that the
confessions presented as evidence had been extracted under torture and should
be dismissed. In addition, defendants’ access to their lawyers was
severely restricted.

Mahmud Matar is still imprisoned in Abu Salim prison. He has
diabetes, high blood pressure, advanced cataract and for the past five months
an inflamed prostate, but the Abu Salim prison authorities have not allowed him
to see a doctor despite repeated requests.

Fathi al-Jahmi

On May 20, 2009, Libya’s most prominent dissident,
Fathi al-Jahmi, died in a Jordanian hospital after six and a half years in
detention. He remained detained in Libya, under the control of the Internal
Security Agency, up until two weeks before his death.

Internal security forces arrested al-Jahmi, an
engineer and former provincial governor, on October 19, 2002, after he
criticized the government and the Libyan leader, Mu`ammar al-Gaddafi, regarding
free elections in Libya, a free press, and the release of political prisoners.
A court sentenced him to five years in prison under articles 166 and 167 of the
penal code: trying to overthrow the government; insulting al-Gaddafi; and
contacting foreign authorities. On March 10, 2004, an appeals court gave
al-Jahmi a suspended sentence of one year and ordered his release on March 12.
That same day, al-Jahmi gave an interview to the US-funded al-Hurra television,
in which he repeated his call for Libya's democratization. He gave another
interview to the station four days later, in which he called al-Gaddafi a
dictator and said, "All that is left for him to do is hand us a prayer
carpet and ask us to bow before his picture and worship him." Two weeks
later, on March 26, 2004, security agents arrested al-Jahmi a second time, and
held him at a special facility on the coast near Tripoli.

Human Rights Watch visited al-Jahmi in May 2005 at the
special facility in Tripoli. He said then that he faced charges on three counts
under articles 166 and 167 of the penal code: trying to overthrow the
government; insulting al-Gaddafi; and contacting foreign authorities. The third
charge, he said, resulted from conversations he had had with a US diplomat in
Tripoli. In September 2006, a court consigned al-Jahmi to a psychiatric
hospital, saying he was ‘mentally unfit.' During the roughly one year
al-Jahmi spent at the psychiatric hospital, his health significantly declined,
forcing his transfer to the Tripoli Medical Center in July 2007.

Human Rights Watch researchers visited al-Jahmi in the
Tripoli Medical Center on April 25 and 26, 2009. The delegation noted a serious
deterioration in his condition since Human Rights Watch last saw him in March
2008 in the Tripoli Medical Center: he appeared frail and emaciated, could
barely speak, and could not lift his arms or head. When the researchers asked
him if he was free to leave, he said, "No." When they asked him if he
wanted to go home, he said, "Yes." Instead, Fathi al-Jahmi, 68,
slipped into a coma on May 3 and was flown to the Amman Medical Center two days
later, accompanied by his son. He underwent surgery on May 7 and died of
unknown causes 13 days later. On May 21, 2009, his son arranged for his body to
be flown back to Libya, where his family buried him.

Libyan officials had announced in March 2008 that al-Jahmi
had been freed and could leave the hospital at any time but Human Rights Watch
assesses that he was detained the entire time he was in the Tripoli Medical
Center. When Human Rights Watch researchers visited him in March 2008, they
noted the presence of guards outside his hospital room and that he and his
family could not freely make decisions about his medical care, due to real or
perceived pressure from the government. In April 2009, four men in plain
clothes were in the room next door; al-Jahmi said they were usually stationed
there. Security officers controlled access to visitors. The Libyan
authorities therefore bore full responsibility for his well-being.

Human Rights Watch repeatedly called for the immediate and
unconditional release of al-Jahmi, as a political prisoner imprisoned for the
peaceful expression of his opinion. Even though al-Jahmi did not die in
detention, his imprisonment contributed to the deterioration in his health.

Disappearance

“Internal Security is a sword hanging
over the necks of the people of Libya. I only want the truth.”[110]

—Libyan relative of prisoner.

The practice of enforced disappearance by Internal Security
continues in Libya. Over the past decades, Internal Security agents have
regularly detained individuals incommunicado in prisons or in Internal Security
offices. Libyan groups estimate that Libyan security officials have
disappeared thousands of individuals over the past three decades.[111]
Hundreds of those disappearance cases have been officially acknowledged this
year in the context of the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre discussion in Section
IX below. Many others, however, have not been addressed and the families of the
disappeared continue to suffer in ignorance.

It is common for security officials to detain those arrested
at undisclosed locations without access to their families or to a lawyer, even
if they are subsequently released after a few months. Many, however, are
detained for several years and some for over a decade. For example, Mohamed
Milad El Seheili told Human Rights Watch how Libyan security forces came to the
family home on the night of November 18, 1998 and arrested him. They also
arrested his two brothers Omar and Boubakr, who were in different apartments at
the time. Mohamed Milad Al Seheili told Human Rights Watch that he was never
charged or told why they arrested him. He was released in March 1999. To this
day, however, Mohamed and his family have been unable to obtain any information
about his two brothers and do not know where they are or what has become of
them.[112]

The following are some of the most high-profile
disappearance cases which remain unresolved:

Jaballa Hamed Matar and Izzat al-Megaryef

Prominent Libyan opposition members Jaballa Hamed Matar and
Izzat al-Megaryefdisappeared in Cairo on March 13, 1990. Both members
of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, they had sought refuge in
Cairo from Gaddafi’s policy of targeted assassinations of those who
declared their opposition to him.

Hisham Matar told Human Rights Watch that for two years
after his father’s disappearance in Cairo in March 1990, Egyptian
security told the family that Jaballa Hamed Matar was in Egypt. In 1993
however, a friend of his father’s brought the family in Cairo a letter in
his father’s handwriting. The letter was dated 1992 and confirmed that
Jaballa Hamed Matar was imprisoned in Abu Salim prison and that Egyptian security
officials had handed him over to Libyan security in March 1990. A second letter
dated 1995 reached the family in 1996. In 2002, a prisoner who had just arrived
at Abu Salim prison, sent a message to Matar’s family, stating that he
had seen Jaballa Hamed Matar in a high-security prison in Tripoli that year.[113]

The Matar family has never received a response from Libyan
officials on the whereabouts of his father, despite letters over the years
requesting information. In an autobiographical essay for The Independent,
Hisham Matar wrote “Life attempts to teach us about loss: that one can
still find peace in the finality of death. And yet, my loss gives no peace. My
father is not incarcerated, yet he is not free; he is not dead, yet he is not
alive either. My loss is self-renewing, insistent and incomplete.”[114]

Youcif al-Megaryef, the son of Izzat al-Megaryef who now
lives in the United States, told Human Rights Watch that “on March 13,
1990 Egyptian Intelligence officer Colonel Mohamad Hassan came to our home
requesting my dad to accompany him for a routine meeting. My father left with
him, never to be seen again.”[115]
The family later received letters written in 1993 and an audio recording from
Izzat saying that Egyptian security officers had interrogated him and then
handed him over to Libyan intelligence on March 14, 1990. Libyan security
officials took Izzat al-Megaryef along with Jaballa Matar and imprisoned them
in Abu Salim prison. Former Abu Salim prisoners told al-Megaryef’s family
that they had communicated with Izzat al-Megaryef. The last news the family
received of him was in April 1996. The Libyan authorities have never responded
to the family’s enquiries about Izzat al-Megaryef’s whereabouts.

Mansur al-Kikhya

On 10 December 1993, Libyan opposition Mansur al-Kikhya was
in Cairo for a meeting of the Arab Organization for Human Rights of which he
was a board member. On that day he disappeared in Cairo and his friends
believe that Egyptian security officials handed him over to Libyan
security. A former Libyan representative to the United Nations and
subsequent foreign minister in the 1970s, al-Kikhya left Libya in 1980 to join
the Libyan opposition abroad. In February 2009, Libyan website Al
Manara reported that the North Benghazi Court held the first session in a
case brought by al-Kikhya’s family to address issues of inheritance and
paperwork. This would be the first time a Libyan court addresses the
disappearance of high-profile dissidents.

Imam Sayyed Musa Sadr

One of the most prominent of the disappearance cases is that
of Lebanese Shii cleric Imam Sayyed Musa Sadr. On August 25, 1978, Imam Sadr
arrived in Libya accompanied by Sheikh Mohamad Yacoub and journalist Abbas
Badreddine for a meeting with Colonel Gaddafi. On August 31, the three set out
from their hotel in Tripoli for the meeting and that was the last time they
were seen. Colonel Gaddafi denied that the meeting ever took place and the
Libyan authorities said that the three had left Libya for Rome. Libya later
refused to meet a panel of investigators.

Death in Custody

Ismail Ibrahim Al Khazmi

Internal Security agents arrested Ismail Ibrahim Al Khazmi,
born 1976, from his home in June 2006. Despite many attempts, his family
was unable to obtain news of his whereabouts and al-Khazmi was disappeared. In
2006 Al-Khazmi died under torture. On May 1, 2007 his family received a medical
report which said he had died of kidney failure. In mid-March 2009 they
asked his family to take the body to bury it but the father refused, saying
that he wants an autopsy and a proper investigation into his son’s death.[116]

Under Article 2(3), Libya has a duty to investigate and
prosecute all violations that amount to crimes, such as those against the right
to life, the right to liberty and security of the person and the right to
recognition before the law, which is violated in the case of an enforced
disappearance. UN Human Rights Committee General Comment 31 says that
failure of a state party to investigate can itself give rise to a separate
breach of the Covenant.[117]
In addition, the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of
Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions state that “there shall be
thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of
extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where complaints
by relatives or other reliable reports suggest unnatural death in the above
circumstances.”[118]
Libya is further required to take measures to prevent similar violations in the
future.

VIII. Impunity for Gross Abuses

The legacy of the abusive practices of the past decades in
Libya is a heavy one.[119]
Most Libyan dissidents targeted by the regime have sought asylum abroad, though
several remain disappeared. The Libyan government has yet to address the
violations of the past through investigation or prosecution. One of the most
serious incidents of gross human rights violations, one which has become
emblematic in Libya, is the Abu Salim mass prison killing of 1200 prisoners in
1996.

The 1996 Abu Salim Killings

On June 28 and 29 1996 an estimated 1200 prisoners were
killed in Abu Salim prison. This number was first made public by Hussein Al
Shafa’i, a former prisoner who was working in the kitchen at Abu Salim
and who calculated this figure by counting the number of meals he prepared
prior to and after the incident.[120]
The number was also confirmed by the Libyan Secretary of Justice to Human
Rights Watch in April 2009[121]
and in a press release by the Gaddafi Foundation on August 10, 2009 which set
the number at 1167.[122]

In June 2004 and again in June 2006, Human Rights Watch
interviewed Hussein al-Shafa’i, the former Abu Salim prisoner, now in the
US, who says he witnessed the killings. While the organization could not
independently verify his claims, many details are consistent with accounts by
other former prisoners.

According to al-Shafa’i, the incident began around
4:40 p.m. on June 28, when prisoners in Block 4 seized a guard named Omar who
was bringing their food. Hundreds of prisoners from blocks 3, 5 and 6 escaped
their cells. They were angry over restricted family visits and poor living
conditions, which had deteriorated after some prisoners escaped the previous
year. Al-Shafa’i told Human Rights Watch:

Five or seven minutes after it started, the guards on the
roofs shot at the prisoners—shot at the prisoners who were in the open
areas. There were 16 or 17 injured by bullets. The first to die was Mahmoud
al-Mesiri. The prisoners took two guards hostage.

Half an hour later, al-Shafa’i said, two top security
officials, Abdallah Sanussi, who is married to the sister of al-Gaddafi’s
wife, and Nasr al-Mabrouk arrived in a dark green Audi with a contingent of
security personnel. Sanussi ordered the shooting to stop and told the prisoners
to appoint four representatives for negotiations. The prisoners chose Muhammad
al-Juweili, Muhammad Ghlayou, Miftah al-Dawadi, and Muhammad Bosadra.

According to al-Shafa’i, who said he observed and
overheard the negotiations from the kitchen, the prisoners asked al-Sanussi for
clean clothes, outside recreation, better medical care, family visits, and the
right to have their cases heard before a court; many of the prisoners were in
prison without trial. Al-Sanussi said he would address the physical conditions,
but the prisoners had to return to their cells and release the two hostages.
The prisoners agreed and released one guard named Atiya, but the guard Omar had
died.

Security personnel took the bodies of those killed and sent
the wounded for medical care. About 120 other sick prisoners boarded three
buses, ostensibly to go to the hospital.

According to al-Shafa’i, he saw the buses take the
prisoners to the back of the prison.
Around 5:00 a.m. on June 29, security forces moved some of the prisoners
between the civilian and military sections of the prison. By 9:00 a.m. they had
forced hundreds of prisoners from blocks 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 into different
courtyards. They moved the low security prisoners in block 2 to the military
section and kept the prisoners in blocks 7 and 8, with individual cells,
inside. Al-Shafa’i, who was behind the administration building with other
kitchen workers at the time, told Human Rights Watch what happened next:

At 11:00, a grenade was thrown into one of the courtyards.
I did not see who threw it but I am sure it was a grenade. I heard an explosion
and right after a constant shooting started from heavy weapons and Kalashnikovs
from the top of the roofs. The shooting continued from 11:00 until 1:35.

He continued:

I could not see the dead prisoners who were shot, but I
could see those who were shooting. They were a special unit and wearing khaki
military hats. Six were using Kalashnikovs.

I saw them—at least six men—on the roofs of the cellblocks.
They were wearing beige khaki uniforms with green bandanas, a turban-like
thing.

Around 2:00 p.m. the forces used pistols to “finish
off those who were not dead.

Around 11 am the next day, June 30, security forces removed
the bodies with wheelbarrows. They threw the bodies into trenches—2 to 3
meters deep, one meter wide and about 100 meters long—that had been dug
for a new wall. “I was asked by the prison guards to wash the watches
that were taken from the bodies of the dead prisoners and were covered in
blood,” al-Shafai’i said.

One family member of an Abu Salim prisoner who died in the
incident told Human Rights Watch that a former prisoner who had been in a
different section of the prison at the time told him that:

He and others went into the cells of the men who had
refused to move. He said they found hair and skin and blood of people
splattered on the walls. They saw the piece of a jaw of one man on the floor.
Even though they had cleaned up the bodies, they didn’t do a good job, so
there were still remnants on the walls and floors.[123]

The killing of 1200 prisoners at Abu Salim amounts to a
violation of the right to life, in Article 6 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICPPR) and a fundamental principle of international
law accepted by the international community. It may also amount to a crime
against humanity, one of the most serious of crimes in international law.[124]

In addition, in most cases the Abu Salim prisoners had been
subject to arbitrary detention in violation of Article 9 of the ICCPR and to
enforced disappearance.

Libya is one of two Arab states (Algeria is the other) to
have signed the first Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which allows individuals
to communicate directly to the committee overseeing the ICCPR regarding alleged
breaches of the convention.[125]
In October 2007, the UN Human Rights Committee found Libya responsible
for the unlawful detention, torture, and enforced disappearance of Abu Baker El
Hassy, who had been arbitrarily arrested and detained in Abu Salim in 1995 and
whose whereabouts remained unknown 11 years later when his brother brought the
claim before the committee.[126]
On July 11, 2007, the UN Human Rights Committee also found Libya responsible
for torture, disappearance and arbitrary execution in El Alwani v Libya,
Communication No. 1295/2004. [127] It found that Libya had violated Article 6 of the ICCPR on the right
to life:

The Committee observes that sometime in 2003, the author was
provided with his brother’s death certificate, without any explanation of
the exact date, cause or whereabouts of his death or any information on
investigations undertaken by the State party. In addition, the State party has
not denied that the disappearance and subsequent death of the author’s
brother was caused by individuals belonging to the Government's security
forces.

General Comment 6 on Article 6, states that “The
protection against arbitrary deprivation of life which is explicitly required
by the third sentence of Article 6 (1) is of paramount importance. The
Committee considers that States parties should take measures not only to
prevent and punish deprivation of life by criminal acts, but also to prevent
arbitrary killing by their own security forces. The deprivation of life by the
authorities of the State is a matter of the utmost gravity.”

From Official Denial to
Grudging Acknowledgment

For years Libyan officials denied that the killings at Abu
Salim had ever taken place. The first public acknowledgement came
in April 2004 when Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi publicly stated that
killings had taken place in Abu Salim, and said that prisoners’ families
have the right to know what took place. On July 26, 2008 Saif al-Islam
al-Gaddafi gave a speech in which he spoke of the Abu Salim killings saying
that:

Investigations are complete and have been submitted to
prosecution. Prosecution will begin its own investigations and summon people.
This won’t be long before the file goes to court and sentences will be
pronounced. There will be respectable and impartial judges, and the court will
be attended by observers. ... All people will be attending: the families, the
press, and civil and human rights NGOs, ambassadors, and everyone will face the
truth. [128]

There has been no official account of the events at Abu
Salim prison and there is no evidence that an investigation into the events
ever took place. According to Libyan Law 47 of 1975 on prisons, the
government must immediately inform the family of an inmate in the case of
death, and it must return the body on request.[129]
In May 2005, Internal Security Agency head Al-Tohamy Khaled told Human Rights
Watch the government had opened an investigation into the 1996 incident.He
denied that any crimes had taken place and told Human Rights Watch that
“when the committee concludes its work, because it has already started,
we’ll give a detailed report answering all questions.”[130]

Four years later, on April 25, 2009, Human Rights Watch
asked Secretary of Public Security General Abdelfattah al-Obeidi about the
investigation and he replied that “it was still ongoing” and that
it was now in the hands of the Secretary of Justice.[131]A day later, however, when Human Rights Watch met with Secretary of
Justice Mostafa Abdeljalil he said that “there has not been any
investigation into this incident until this point.”[132]

The Secretary of Justice’s admission to Human Rights
Watch reflects the fact that he is one of the Libyan authorities seeking to
address the issue through the legal framework. It also reflects the fact that
even he has been unable to obtain all the relevant information about the Abu
Salim killings from the Internal Security Agency. In April 2008, Secretary of
Justice Mostafa Abdeljalil, gave an interview to Libya Al Youm. In it,
he said his ministry had asked Internal Security for the list of those who died
in the 1996 incident but had been unable to obtain the precise information.[133]

In March 2007 a group of 30 families in Benghazi filed a
civil claim before the North Benghazi Court to compel the Libyan government to
reveal the fate of their detained relatives. This was the first
collective action by families because, before that, as one of the family
members involved told Human Rights Watch, “many of the families were too
afraid to take action.”[134] Initially the court dismissed their claim on procedural grounds,
ruling on June 24, 2007 that it did not have jurisdiction to review
administrative decisions. The families appealed this and on April 19, 2008, the
court ruled in their favor accepting jurisdiction. On June 8, 2008, the North
Benghazi Court ruled in favor of the families:

The Court orders respondent 1, 2 and 3 [the Prime Minister,
the Secretary of Public Security and the Secretary of Justice] to reveal the
fate of the following detainees and their place of detention and the reasons
for their detention and to officially inform the applicants of their fate.[135]

The court did not, however, address the broader questions of
accountability. It did not examine whether an investigation had taken place nor
did it order those responsible to be prosecuted. The decision was a victory for
the families because it was the first formal recognition of the legitimacy of
their requests, but the court was still unable or unwilling to order a full
investigation of the events at Abu Salim.

In a December 2008 interview with Quryna, one of the
two privately owned newspapers in Libya, Libyan Secretary of Justice Mostafa
Abdeljalil said that he had called upon the General People’s Committee
(the cabinet) to implement the court decision.[136]
It was following this court order that the government began in earnest the
process of notifying families of the death of their relatives by issuing death
certificates and offering compensation.

In the context of the continuing official blackout
surrounding the Abu Salim killings, the release of prisoner Mohamed Bousidra in
June 2009 is significant because, as one of the key witnesses to a mass killing
that the authorities denied ever happened, most people expected him to remain
detained indefinitely. As an respected figure in the prison, Bousidra was one
of the prisoner representatives who negotiated demands with senior security
official Abdallah al-Sanussi and is believed to have witnessed the events that
unfolded. Security forces arrested him, along with his four brothers, on
January 19, 1989 in Al Baydaa and took him to Abu Salim prison.
Bousidra’s brothers were released after six years of detention without
charge. In 1999, more than 10 years after his arrest, the People’s Court
tried and sentenced Bousidra to life imprisonment. After its abolition in
January 2005, he was retried before a special court in June 2005 which reduced
the sentence to 10 years. At that time he already had been imprisoned for 16
years and the presiding judge therefore ordered his release. But he continued
to be detained at an Internal Security detention center before being moved in
2008 back to Abu Salim prison. His son Tarek was able to visit him on January
31, 2009 for the first time since May 21, 2005. Internal Security finally
released Mohamed Bousidra from Abu Salim prison on June 7, 2009 and he moved to
Benghazi where his family lives. Bousidra has not spoken out about what he
witnessed.

Offers of Compensation
but Not Truth

“My brother has been disappeared for 13
years. My father died as a result of the sadness. ‘Justice is a
right for us.”[137]

Libyan relative of Abu Salim victim, March 9, 2009

“They hide him and kill him and we
don’t know where his body is and then ask us to accept this money and
reconcile with the state?”

Brother of Abu Salim victim, May 20, 2009

Between 2001 and 2006 the authorities notified around 112
families, a small fraction of the total number of disappeared prisoners, that a
relative held in Abu Salim was dead, without providing the body or details on
the cause of death. [138]
However, until recently, most of the families had received no official
notification about the fate of their loved ones. From January to March 2009,
the government stepped up the process, providing verification to an estimated
351 families, of which 160 are in Benghazi, and the rest in Tripoli, Derna, Al
Bayda and Misrata. Libyan Secretary of Justice Mostafa Abdeljalil told
Human Rights Watch in April 2009 that, to date, the People’s Leadership
Committees had informed the relatives of some 800 to 820 victims of their deaths
and had issued them with death certificates; families of 350 to 400 victims had
not yet been informed.[139]

In most cases, local police stations and offices of Internal
Security have summoned surviving family members and informed them of the death
of their relatives, providing them with official death certificates to
sign. In some cases the families have been summoned to the local
People’s Leadership Committee and been informed by them.[140]The death certificates have not stated the cause or specified the place
of death beyond saying ‘Tripoli.’ The dates of death specified have
ranged between June, July or September but none that Human Rights Watch has
seen have stated June 28 or 29.

Many of the prisoners who were killed in 1996 had been
imprisoned in Abu Salim since 1989 or 1995, years in which mass arrests took
place to crack down on perceived opposition. For years, many families did not
even know for sure whether their relatives had been detained in Abu Salim
because they had lost all contact with them at their time of arrest. To these
families, their loved ones had disappeared.

Mohamed Hamil Ferjany, former spokesperson for the committee
of families who is now in the U.S., told Human Rights Watch about his two
brothers who were killed in Abu Salim:

My brothers Al-Sanussi and Khaled Ferjany were arrested in
1995. Every three months, my family would load up the car with clothes,
food and bed linen and drive 12 hours from Benghazi to the prison, in
Tripoli. We put the things in sacks with my brothers’ names on them
and left them at the gate of the prison. All this time we were leaving them
things, we thought they were safe, all this time they were dead and the
security guards were taking the clothes for themselves.[141]

Another family member told Human Rights Watch:

We knew that he’d been taken by Internal Security in
Benghazi but after that we didn’t know anything. I went, my brother went,
my mother went to all the prisons - we didn’t know where he was, and they
refused to tell us. At the beginning of 1996 we heard about something that had
happened in the prison, and then the story started to emerge after people were
released. Fourteen years after his disappearance, in March 2009, Internal
Security called us saying we should come to see them – when we were there
they said here is your brother’s death certificate and nothing more.[142]

A third said:

My brother’s wife was waiting for 10 years to know
about the status of my brother, her husband. Then she died. They had a
daughter, who was born right before they took him to prison. Now her
grandmother, my sister-in-law’s mother is raising her, but we are helping
also. She never got to see her father. He never held her, never hugged her.[143]

For some families the receipt of the death certificate was
the first official acknowledgment of their detention and the destruction of all
hope. In one day the Taiib family in Mistarah learned of the death of five of
its members, the youngest of whom was 14 when he was arrested.[144]

One family member from Benghazi met Human Rights Watch on
April 24, 2009, at great personal risk to himself:

About one month ago... someone from internal security came
to my door. He said, “Come with me.” He didn’t tell me why or
what for. I was scared; I was shaking. Why were they calling me in? What was
going to happen to me now? They asked for my ID card, wrote down the details.
They took me to the neighborhood where the Internal Security buildings are
located. They took me to an office.

Inside there was one man, and there was a gun –
a rifle, a Kalashnikov I think, leaning against the wall. He did not give me
his name. He was from internal security. He said, “I want to talk to you.
Your brother is gone. Come sign this paper.” I saw the paper. It was a
death certificate. There was no reason given for the cause of his death. I
became very upset. I said, “Even dogs get a reason for their
death.” I refused to sign the paper.[145]

Initially, the government offered families 120,000 dinars
(US$98,590) in compensation if the deceased detainee was single, and 130,000
($106,800) if he was married. By June 2009, however, the authorities increased
the initial offer to 200,000 Libyan Dinars ($164,300). A brother of an Abu
Salim victim told Human Rights Watch that when his family refused the
compensation on principle, Internal Security officers offered to double the
amount and to try to facilitate the release of other family members imprisoned
in Abu Salim.[146]

The offer of compensation comes with strings attached: the
families must give up any further legal claims. For some of the families who
have suffered the pain of the disappearance of their relative, the money is not
enough.[147]
Many families have said that they have a right to justice and anything less
than that is insufficient. Interestingly, the authorities have specified that
families who accept compensation from the government must relinquish any
further legal claims both internally and internationally, which indicates an
awareness of the possibilities of seeking justice through international
mechanisms.

Although several families in Tripoli and other cities appear
to have accepted compensation, most of the families in Benghazi have refused,
insisting that they want to know who the perpetrators were and to hold them
legally responsible. The Libyan Secretary of Justice, Mostafa Abdeljalil, told
Human Rights Watch in April 2009 that “the offers of compensation were
made in the context of reconciliation. Around 30% of the families who had so
far been informed of the death of their relatives have accepted the offer of
compensation, 60% have refused because they think the amount is insufficient
and 10% have refused on principle.”[148] On
August 10, 2009 the Gaddafi Foundation issued a statement saying that 569
families had received compensation and that 598 families remained.[149]
These are the only official statistics available at the time of writing and
their inconsistency is a reflection of the difficulty of obtaining information
from the Internal Security Agency.

One man received a death certificate from the People’s
Leadership Committee on May 24, 2009, informing him that his brother Fathi had
died. He told Human Rights Watch that he rejected the offer of compensation of
120 thousand Dinars as “insufficient” because “they paid 10
million dollars for Lockerbie victims and they offer us 120,000 Libyan Dinars?
We don’t want their money, we want the truth and to bury our
relatives.”[150]Saad el Ferjany’s son Salah was arrested on January 14th, 1989.
Since that time Saad el El Ferjany was only able to visit him once in the first
years in Abu Salim and he fears that his son was among those killed but has not
received any official notification. He told a journalist that “since the
Libyan state refuses to tell us of the fate of our children, we will ask the
outside world for our rights... I want to know the fate of my son, and this
offer of compensation is unjust.”[151]

Unprecedented Activism
– the Demands of the Families

As the families of Abu Salim victims became more vocal and
organized over the years, they started taking action collectively. In April
2008, some families, who had already taken the case to court, went on to form
the Coordination Committee of the Families of the Victims to represent their
demands.[152]
In the context of Libyan laws, which severely restrict freedom of assembly and
association and the lack of any independent NGOs, the creation of the committee
was ground-breaking. One committee member told Human Rights Watch that
they had tried to register it as a non-governmental organization but Internal
Security refused this early on.[153]

The committee also organized demonstrations by the families,
at high risk since demonstrations are prohibited in Libya. The first
demonstrations by the families started in Benghazi in June 2008, and have
continued to take place every couple of months. They have varied from around 30
or 40 individuals to 150 on November 30, 2008.[154]
In March 2009, one family member told Human Rights Watch about the intimidation
they experience, how the more active members of the committee are summoned for
interrogation and at the demonstrations “security forces turn out in
force, they are filming all the family members who turn up. Senior security
officials come to the demos and tell the older members to go home. All of our
posters are about our sons, the truth, nothing against Gaddafi.”[155]

Another family member told Human Rights Watch:

Every time I went to a demonstration I was preparing myself
for arrest, my family were afraid for me. Internal Security called me once
after a demonstration and threatened me with imprisonment. But I have nothing
to fear, four of my brothers were imprisoned in Abu Salim and two of them died
there. I am not afraid anymore. I need to talk about it; I feel that by talking
to you, you can make my voice heard, not just my voice but that of all the
families. [156]

A third said that

Internal security prevents us from talking to people in
Tripoli. They want everything to go through them. They don’t like
everything the Gaddafi Foundation is trying to do for the people. They follow
us everywhere. They harass us all the time.

I love my country. My dream is to improve the educational
system in this country. I want to get my PhD; I want to help my people. But
they consider me a bad man, a bad citizen. Why? What have I done?[157]

In March 2009, the committee published a list of demands by
the families on Libyan websites abroad, calling upon the Libyan authorities to:
[158]

1.reveal the truth about the fate of their relatives

2.prosecute those responsible

3.hand over remains to the families or reveal burial place

4.issue proper death certificates with the correct dates and place
of death

5.make an official apology in the media

6.release all other arbitrarily detained family members of Abu
Salim victims

7.increase the compensation to that offered to Lockerbie victims

One of the main coordinators of the committee, Mohamed Hamil
al-Ferjany, who left Libya in March 2009 and is currently in the US, told Human
Rights Watch that, at the beginning, senior security officials and ministers
were engaging with the committee. Security officials invited him to Tripoli for
consultations for two weeks in February 2009, in which he met with senior
security official Abdallah al-Sanussi and the Secretary of Justice Mostafa
Abdeljalil. It soon became clear, however, that there was no willingness on the
part of the authorities to prosecute any of those responsible for the Abu Salim
killings, he said. Since this was an unshakeable demand by the committee,
negotiations broke down. “They think they can solve it through money and that’s
enough, so they’ve stopped dealing with the families,” al-Ferjany
told Human Rights Watch.[159]

On March 25 and 26, 2009 Internal Security forces
arrested four members of the families’ committee in Benghazi.[160]
On the evening of March 25, Internal Security officers arrested family members
Hussein Al Madany and Fouad Ben Omran at their homes. Armed officers also
searched, without warrant, the home of Fathi Terbil, a lawyer, who was away at
the time, and confiscated his laptop. The next morning, at another
demonstration by the group, security officers arrested Fathi Terbil. Terbil
told Human Rights Watch that security officers asked him upon his arrest,
“Why are you doing this Fathi, why in this illegal way? I said the state
won’t listen to me, I just want to know the truth, my niece has never
seen her father.”[161]
Internal security officers detained all three incommunicado for four days and
released them on March 30, 2009 after a media outcry and the intervention of
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.

When Human Rights Watch raised concerns about these arrests
with Colonel Al-Tohamy Khaled, the head of Internal Security, he said
that they had “arrested the individuals who incited the violence”
and that these family members had used “illegal means because they had
not obtained permission to hold their demonstration.”[162]

Despite the threat of arrest and the atmosphere of
intimidation, the demonstrations by the families have continued. Since March,
families in al-Baida and Derna have also started organizing demonstrations in
front of the Internal Security Agency offices. The biggest demonstration
to date took place on June 29, 2009, on the anniversary of the killings, when
more than 200 men, women and children walked through the streets of Benghazi
carrying banners and pictures of their dead relatives.

Video footage was posted online on Al Manara of women
chanting:

“We don’t want money; we want the
butchers.”

“Oh Gaddafi where are our children? We want the
bodies of the martyred.”

After these demonstrations Secretary of Justice Mostafa
Abdeljalil said that those who did not accept the compensation offer were free
to resort to the courts and the state would implement any final decision issued
by the courts.[164]

Libya’s
Obligations Under International Law

Under international law, governments have an obligation to
provide victims of human rights abuses with an effective remedy—including
justice, truth, and adequate reparations—after they suffer a violation.
As a state party to the ICCPR Libya has an obligation to provide an accessible,
effective and enforceable remedy “determined by competent judicial,
administrative or legislative authorities, or by any other competent authority
provided for by the legal system of the State, and to develop the possibilities
of judicial remedy.”

Victims and their families have a right to know the truth
about violations they suffered. The UN General Assembly has endorsed the
principle that victims’ right to remedies includes having access to
relevant information concerning human rights violations.[165] International principles adopted by the former UN Commission on
Human Rights state that “irrespective of any legal proceedings, victims,
their families and relatives have the imprescriptible right to know the truth
about the circumstances in which violations took place.”[166]
International human rights bodies have emphasized the state’s obligation
to provide information to victims, particularly in cases of enforced
disappearance. The UN Human Rights Committee has held that the extreme anguish
inflicted upon relatives of the “disappeared” makes them direct
victims of the violation as well.[167]
In addition to informing the victims and their families, the state has an
obligation to inform society in general about human rights abuses, particularly
when the violations are serious.[168]
This obligation derives partly from its duty to prevent future
violations.

The duty to provide an effective remedy must also include
returning the remains of those killed to their families to allow them to
provide a proper burial. In the case of Trujillo Oroza v. Bolivia the
Inter-American Court ruled that “the delivery of the mortal remains in
cases of detained-disappeared persons is, in itself, an act of justice and
reparation. It is an act of justice to know the whereabouts of the disappeared
person and it is a form of reparation because it allows the victims to be
honored, since the mortal remains of a person merit being treated with respect
by their relatives, and so that the latter can bury them appropriately.”[169]

Several international treaties, including the ICCPR and the
African Charter, require that individuals be tried by “independent and
impartial tribunals.”[170]
International human rights bodies have consistently rejected the use of
military prosecutors and courts in cases involving abuses against civilians, by
stating that the jurisdiction of military courts should be limited to offenses
that are strictly military in nature. Sets of principles presented before
the former United Nations Human Rights Commission also recommend that human
rights cases be transferred to civilian courts. the Draft Principles Governing
the Administration of Justice through Military Tribunals, presented to the
commission in January 2006, state that “in all circumstances, the
jurisdiction of military courts should be set aside in favor of the
jurisdiction of the ordinary courts to conduct inquiries into serious human
rights violations such as extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and
torture, and to prosecute and try persons accused of such crimes.”[171]

IX. The State Security Court- A New People’s
Court?

Libya established the People’s Court in 1988 to try political
and security crimes against the state. It included an appeals court and a
prosecution service, the Popular Prosecution Office. Many cases involved
charges of illegal political activities that should have been protected under
the rights to free association or speech, in particular, alleged violations of
Law 71, which bans any group activity based on a political ideology opposed to
the principles of the 1969 revolution that brought al-Gaddafi to power. The
People’s Court was widely criticized for politically-motivated trials
that did not provide for the rights of defense or appeal and for accepting
confessions extracted under torture.[172]

Human Rights Watch and other groups welcomed the abolition
of the People’s Court in 2005[173]
but stressed that those convicted for the peaceful expression of political
views should be immediately released and compensated for their time in prison.
Human Rights Watch has urged that all those convicted by the People’s
Court be given new trials in Libya’s regular criminal courts, with full
transparency and due process guarantees. The Chief Justice of the Libyan
Supreme Court, Dr. Abdulrahman Abu Tuta, told Human Rights Watch that the
People’s Court was an exceptional court and that after its abolition all
the cases were transferred to the normal courts.[174]
The UN Human Rights Committee has expressed concern that this has not occurred,
stating in its Concluding Observations to Libya’s periodic report in
November 2007 that “the convictions and sentences handed down by the
People’s Court should be reviewed by the State party’s judicial
authority in the light of the guarantees contained in article 14 of the
Covenant.”[175]

The Higher Judicial Council, which has the power to review
Supreme Court decisions and commute death sentences, created the State Security
court on August 19, 2007 by decision 27 to address “crimes related to
security.”[176]
It was established in accordance with Law number 6 and decision No. 3 of the
Higher Judicial Council on the creation of special courts. The UN Human Rights
Committee has expressed concern about the new court, saying it is unclear about
“the difference between the State Security Court and the former
People’s Court.”[177]

Libyan lawyers told Human Rights Watch that even though the
People’s Court had been abolished in 2005, its laws are still in force
and the new State Security Court is using the same procedures as the
People’s Court.[178]
Many of the State Security Court judges were formerly judges in the
People’s Court. The decisions of the State Security Court are not
publicly available to the defendants, their families or, frequently, to their
lawyers. Former defendants before this court told Human Rights Watch that no
appeal was available to them. Internal Security prevents lawyers from
accompanying their clients during interrogations and the lawyers often are
unable to get access to the case files necessary to prepare their
defense. The State Security court will try cases of alleged violations of
Law 71 which bans any group activity based on a political ideology opposed to
the principles of the 1969 revolution that brought al-Gaddafi to power.

As party to the ICCPR, Libya is obliged under Article 14 to
provide for the right to fair trial. This includes ensuring that the rights of
defense are fully respected to ensure equality with the prosecution and that
every defendant is granted the right to appeal the decision. The court must
also ensure that confessions obtained under torture are not accepted as
evidence in the courtroom. Human Rights Watch opposes the creation of
special courts to try national security crimes. Such courts typically lack
respect for the rights of defendants. Trials should be conducted before the
normal criminal courts with all the procedural guarantees in international law.

Human Rights Watch has interviewed five prisoners tried and
convicted by the State Security Court. The following are examples of cases
decided by the State Security court which reveal a number of procedural
irregularities that do not comply with international due process standards.
Human Rights Watch calls upon the Libyan authorities to quash the sentences of
or retry, with due process guarantees, all prisoners sentenced after unfair
trials.

Abdelhakim Al-Khoweildy

While on a research mission to Libya in April 2009, Human
Rights Watch interviewed former CIA secret detainee Abdelhakim Al-Khoweildy
(also known as Abdallah al-Sadeq). Al-Khoweildy is one of the leaders of the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which for years sought to overthrow
Gaddafi’s rule but which recently renounced violence in August 2009 and
negotiated the release of hundreds of its members from Abu Salim prison over
the past years. Al-Khoweildy told Human Rights Watch that the State Security
Court had sentenced himto death in 2008. Malaysian security officials
had arrested him on March 3, 2004 and handed him over to the CIA which he says
interrogated and tortured him in Thailand.[179] The CIA rendered
Abdelhakim Al-Khoweildy to Libya on March 9, 2004.[180]
He told Human Rights Watch:

After two years of interrogation by External Security, I
was brought before the court. The court was in the new building, State
Security. There were 13 charges against me for my activities in Libya. I was
taken to court, they read out the charges to me, then took me back to prison.
Six months later they informed me of the verdict. They appointed a lawyer from
the People’s Bureau (muhamat shaabiya) but I never saw his face.
There were seven others in the same case, case No. 1. The fact that we actually
had a trial is positive, but the one negative thing I would like to point out
is that I was unable to meet a lawyer.[181]

Abdelhakim Al-Khoweildy remains imprisoned in Abu Salim
prison.

Mohamed Ahmed Al-Shoro’eyya

On August 28, 2004, the CIA rendered Mohamed
al-Shoro’eyya(also known as Hassan Rabi’i) to Libya after
approximately 17 months in CIA custody. The State Security Court sentenced
al-Shoro’eyya to life imprisonment for membership in an illegal
organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, on June 16, 2006. He
spoke to Human Rights Watch at Abu Salim prison in the presence of a guard who
refused to leave, and said:

I was interrogated, then brought before the State Security
court. I was sentenced to life imprisonment on 17 July 2006. I was assigned a
state lawyer but I did not have the opportunity to sit down with him and talk
to him. They charged me with membership in an illegal organization, the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group. It was case # 120.[182]

Case of Idris Boufayed, Jamal el Haji and 12 Others

In February 2007 Libyan security agents arrested 14
organizers of a planned peaceful demonstration intended to commemorate the
anniversary of a violent crackdown on demonstrators in Benghazi. Security
forces detained them incommunicado in Ain Zara and Al-Jdaida prisons until 24
June 2007 when twelve of the group came before a court to face charges of
"attempting to overthrow the political system" and
"communication with enemy powers.” Their case was transferred to the
newly created State Security Court on November 6, 2007. The defendants
had not been able to see their lawyers outside the courtroom[183]
and this was one of the first requests they made to the judge. The judge agreed
to grant their request ordering Libyan security to allow them to meet with the
lawyers.[184]
On June 10, 2008 the State Security Court sentenced the twelve men to prison
terms of between six and 25 years.

Security forces had also arrested Jum'a Boufayed, the
brother of Idris, and Abderrahman al-Qotaiwi along with the others, but they
did not appear in court, prompting fears that they had been
"disappeared." However, in May 2008 the authorities released Jum'a
Boufayed without charge, and they released al-Qotaiwi, in mid-February 2009.
The main organizer of the planned demonstration, Idris Boufayed, received a
25-year sentence, but was released from detention on medical grounds in October
2008 due to his advanced lung cancer. He travelled to Switzerland on 11
December 2008 for treatment. Libya released nine of the prisoners between
June and December 2008 and the last two in March 2009.

The court had sentenced Jamal al-Haji, a writer who holds
Danish citizenship, to 12 years of imprisonment. Libyan authorities rebuffed
Danish government requests to visit him. Prison authorities placed Al-Haji in
solitary confinement in November 2008 after he refused to end a hunger strike
in protest against his continued detention.[185] The authorities
eventually released him on March 10, 2009.

Case of Shukri Sahil

Internal Security officers arrested Shukri
Sahil, whose case is described above in Section VII, in May 2004 for attempting
to set up a human rights organization and detained him in Abu Salim prison. In
January 2006 the Court of Appeals in Tripoli acquitted him. Sahil was released
on February 28, 2006. After the public prosecutor appealed this decision, the
Supreme Court ordered a retrial. The case was transferred to the State Security
Court following its creation in August 2007. On June 6, 2008, the
Prosecutor of the State Security Court issued a subpoena ordering Shukri Sahil
to appear before the court on June 17. Sahil said he decided to leave Libya for
Turkey on June 16, 2008 because he knew he would not get a fair trial before
this court. On November 18, 2008 the State Security court sentenced him to
death in absentia. Sahil told Human Rights Watch: “I was able to
appoint a private lawyer who represented me in court, but after the death
penalty sentence he stopped taking my calls. My family and friends were unable
to obtain the decision from the court or from the lawyer.” [186]
Shukri Sahil is currently in Europe.

X. The Death Penalty

Despite assertions by some Libyan authorities that the
nation is working toward elimination of the death penalty, death sentences
continue to be handed out and executions continue to take place.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court President Dr. Abdulrahman
Abu Tuta told Human Rights Watch that around 35 to 40 people are sentenced to
death in Libya every year but that only 5% to 7% of these sentences are carried
out annually. [187]
He said that:

Death sentences are never implemented until the Higher
Judicial Council, which is chaired by the Secretary of Justice, has reviewed
the decision by the lower court both substantively and procedurally. Even after
the decision is ratified, the decision is not carried out except four years
later because the Libyan penal code gives the families of the victim a right to
issue a pardon in exchange for diyya (blood money). If a payment is
agreed, the case is returned by the General Prosecutor to the court which first
issued the ruling, and the sentence is replaced with life imprisonment. There
are very few death sentences that are actually carried out because there are
often pardons issued. It is through a process of social reconciliation that
Libyan society works towards decreasing the death penalty.[188]

Dr. Abdulrahman Abu Tuta said that around half of those
sentenced to death were foreign nationals, either Egyptian migrant workers or
irregular migrants from other African countries.

As it stands, the only chance for a prisoner to escape being
sentenced to death is if an agreement over blood money is reached. Libyan law
No. 6 provides for a right of Qisas (retribution) to the families of the
victim, a concept adopted from Shari’a law which resonates strongly in
Libyan society where tribal and familial ties remain strong. Therefore, the
only way to get a death sentence commuted, other than through order of the
Higher Judicial Council which only occurs in high profile cases, is to get the
family of the victim to agree to give up their right to Qisas in
exchange for blood money. This system allows commutation only when someone can
pay, thereby excluding all those without financial means. It has also proved to
be unreliable since bureaucratic delays have at times led to premature
executions while negotiations over a settlement were ongoing.

A large number of Egyptians are on death row in Libya. Their
cases have been publicized because of attempts by the Egyptian foreign ministry
to intervene on their behalf. [189]
The Libyan authorities have carried out many executions, however, including
another Egyptian national executed on November 10, 2008.[190]
An Egyptian NGO, the Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the
Legal Profession has been working with Waatasemu, the organization run by Dr.
Aisha al-Gaddafi, and has successfully arranged for Diyya (blood money)
payments in a number of these cases.

The unreliable nature of this system is highlighted by the
fact that there have been cases where the death sentence is carried out despite
an agreement over blood money for reasons of bureaucratic delays. On July
29, 2009, Libyan authorities executed Egyptian national Fadl Ismail Heteita for
murder after more than three years on death row. An agreement had been reached
with the family of the victim to commute his death sentence in exchange for
30,000 Egyptian pounds ($ 5,400) but the Libyan Prosecutor General did not
recognize the document because it had not been authenticated by the Egyptian
Foreign Ministry.

The discussion in Libya about banning the death penalty is
alive but has progressed little since it began in 1988 with the enactment of
the Great Green Charter for Human Rights. Article 8 of the charter says:
“The goal of the Jamahiriyan society is to abolish capital
punishment.” On April 18, 2004, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi gave a speech
to the Supreme Council for Judicial Authority and other high-ranking members of
the judiciary in which he called for a number of legal reforms, including a
reduction in the number of crimes for which the death penalty is applied.
Despite the leader’s call, the Basic People’s Congresses decided
against abolishing capital punishment. Al-Gaddafi repeated his call in a
November 2004 speech to Libyan judges and law students that was broadcast on
Libya’s state television. Abolishing the death penalty should stem
from societal progress, he said, and it “should not be the result of
economic, political or security pressures like the ones piled on Turkey to win
a European Union membership.”[191]

Despite these expressed positions, the Libyan penal code
prescribes the death penalty for a broad range of crimes, including for actions
which should be protected by the rights to freedom of association and
expression. Article 3 of Law 71 criminalizes forming, joining or supporting any
group activity opposing the ideology of the 1969 revolution that brought
al-Gaddafi to power. Article 206 of the penal code imposes the
death penalty on those who call "for the establishment of any grouping,
organization or association proscribed by law," and for those who belong
to or support such an organization.The UN Human Rights Committee noted
with concern in its Concluding Comments to Libya’s state report that
“under current legislation the death penalty can be applied to offences
which are vague and broadly defined and which cannot necessarily be
characterized as the most serious crimes under article 6, paragraph 2, of the
Covenant.”[192]

Proposed reforms to the Libyan penal code would narrow the
application of the death penalty but would still retain it for a number of
crimes such as the purchasing of unfit or hazardous weapons (Article 145),
attacks on foreign heads of state (Article 172), murder (Article 273) and
murder accompanied by highway robbery (Article 345). Human Rights Watch notes
and welcomes the fact that there has been a reduction in the new draft of the
crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed and that it has been replaced
with life imprisonment in many cases. However it urges that the death penalty
in any remaining provisions be replaced with imprisonment since this is a more
humane and modern punishment and there is no evidence that the death penalty
serves as a deterrent.

The current global trend is towards the abolition of the
death penalty and is best reflected in the December 18, 2007 General Assembly
resolution 62/149 calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions. The
resolution was adopted by a majority of 104 member states in favor, 54
countries against and 29 abstentions. Human Rights Watch opposes the
infliction of capital punishment in all circumstances because of its inherent
cruelty and because it is most often carried out in a discriminatory manner.

Acknowledgements

This report was researched and written by Heba Morayef,
researcher at Human Rights Watch. The report was edited by Sarah Leah Whitson,
director of the Middle East and North Africa division, and Lisa Anderson,
Encore Fellow at the Columbia Journalism Review and freelance editor. Clive
Baldwin, senior legal advisor, conducted the legal review. The report was
edited by Iain Levine, director of the Program Office. MENA interns Lara Haddad
and Felix Legrand assisted with the research and formatting of this report.

Human Rights Watch’s delegation to Libya in April 2009
was composed of Heba Morayef, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa
Division, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s
Middle East and North Africa Division, and Bill Frelick, director of the
Refugee Program at Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch thanks the Gaddafi
Foundation for facilitating the trip and the Libyan authorities for the
meetings they granted us and the visit to the Abu Salim prison.

Human Rights Watch also thanks the many individuals in
Libya, the United Kingdom and other countries that helped strengthen this
report’s accuracy and depth. The organization especially thanks Libya
Human Rights Solidarity for the assistance it has provided.

Annex : Letters to the Authorities

Letter to Libyan Secretary for Justice

Hi Excellency Mostafa Abdeljelil

Secretary of the General People’s Committee

For Justice

Tripoli

Libyan Jamahireyya

June 25, 2009

Your Excellency,

I am writing to thank you once more for meeting with the
Human Rights Watch delegation on April 26th. We greatly appreciated the
opportunity to speak with you and your openness in responding to our questions,
especially since we know that you were very busy on that day.

It is important for us to meet with Libyan officials and to
understand the position of the General People’s Committee for Justice on
the various issues we raised. As we explained to you, Human Rights
Watch’s methodology includes speaking to officials, organizations and
individuals about different issues so that we can obtain the most complete
picture possible.

We are currently in the process of drafting our report
related to the mission and have some questions we would like to ask you. Some
relate to issues we discussed while we met you, others to developments since that
time. We would like to get a response from your office on these issues to
enable us to fully reflect the views of the Libyan authorities in our report.
For this reason we would appreciate receiving a response by July 5.

The issues and questions we would like to request further
clarification on are the following:

We understand from you and from other sources that there are
a number of individuals who remain imprisoned in Abu Salim who have either
served their sentences or have been acquitted by courts. We know that you
explained that Abu Salim and Ain Zara prisons do not fall under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and would therefore like to know:

-What recourse do prisoners have to challenge
their continued detention by Internal Security?

-What is the number of prisoners who have
completed their sentences yet remain imprisoned in Abu Salim and Ain Zara?

-What is the number of prisoners who have
been acquitted by courts yet remain imprisoned in Abu Salim and Ain Zara?

-What is the formal legal basis for their
continued detention?

We are interested in learning more about the State Security
Court and how it functions. We would be grateful to learn from you whether
defendants before this court (1) may appeal the court’s verdict and if so
on what grounds and to which court; and (2) have the right to appoint lawyers
of their own choosing.

-Could you provide us with the law that
established the court and the code of penal procedure that applies to this
court?

-Do defense lawyers have the right to access
all elements in the files of defendants before the state security court?

-How many prisoners are currently imprisoned
in Abu Salim or Ain Zara prisoners after convictions by the state security
court?

We would also like to ensure that we fully understand the
relationship between the People’s Court and the State Security Court. Law
Number 5 of 1988, which created the People’s Court, is still on the
website of the General People’s Committee for Justice. Does this
mean that the law is still in force? If so how, how does this relate to Law
Number 7 of 1373, which abolished the People’s Court and is also
available on the same website?

-Are all cases that were previously brought
before the People’s Court now being referred to the State Security court?

-Were individuals serving sentences handed
down by the People’s Court given the possibility of a retrial after the
abolition of the People’s Court? If so which courts were competent
to review the verdicts of the People’s Court?

We discussed with you the process of informing the families
of victims of the 1996 Abu Salim killings of the death of their relatives.

-Who is responsible for informing the family
members? What information are they providing the families about the cause and
the circumstances of death?

-Are the requests of the Committee of
Families of Abu Salim victims being considered by the General People’s
Committee? And if so who is responsible for discussing and negotiating the
Committee’s demands with its members?

-What is the status of the investigation into
the events that occurred at Abu Salim prison at the end of June 1996?

We understand that over the last couple of years a number of
journalists have been brought before the Public Prosecutor or the Press
Prosecutor.

-How many journalists have been prosecuted on
charges of libel over the last two years?

-How many journalists have been convicted and
what were the specific charges in those cases? How many journalists are
currently imprisoned because of something they have written?

-Can the General Prosecutor or the Press
Prosecutor initiate a case against a journalist without permission from the
General People’s Committee for Media?

One of the things we are very interested in is
accountability: understanding what procedures exist for lodging complaints
against police and internal or external security officers.

-Can the General People’s Committee for
Justice initiate an investigation into alleged violations committed by police
officers or Internal Security officers? Or does this require approval
from the General People’s Committee for Security?

-How many police officers and how many
security officers have been charged with torture, ill-treatment or arbitrary
arrest and detention over the past 3 years ? How many of them have been
convicted and what were their names, ranks and sentences?

We were very interested to hear of the attempt by Libyan
citizens to set up two new non-governmental organizations, the Association for
Truth and Justice and the Centre for Democracy.

-Is it true that Internal Security objected
to the inclusion of twelve individuals as members in the Association and it was
on that basis that the agency revoked the original authorization granted to the
organization?

-We heard that one of the members of the
Centre for Democracy was kidnapped in Tripoli on June 30, 2008 and beaten up.
Was this incident investigated and has anyone been found responsible for this?

-How many new non-governmental organizations
have been registered over the past 5 years?

Finally, we would also like to request a copy of the
following legal texts:

-The draft refugee law

-The draft law on associations

-The law establishing the State Security
Court and its statute and procedures.

We thank you very much for our meeting and hope to be able
to return to Libya to discuss our reports with you in the near future.

* * *

Letter to Libyan Secretary for Public Security

His Excellency General Abdelfattah El-Abeidi

Secretary of the General People’s Committee

For Public Security

Tripoli

Libyan Jamahireyya

June 25, 2009

Your Excellency,

I am writing to thank you for receiving us at your office on
April 25, 2009. We greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss with you
issues of mutual concern.

I would also like to thank you for the meeting we had at the
Public Relations Office the preceding week where we heard about the training in
human rights and international law that your ministry provides to police and
security officers and also about how your government addresses the issue of
migration.

It is important for us to meet with Libyan officials and to
understand the position of the General People’s Committee for Public
Security on the various issues we raised. As we explained to you, Human Rights
Watch’s methodology includes speaking to officials, organizations and
individuals about various issues so that we can obtain the most complete
picture possible.

We are currently in the process of drafting our report
related to the mission and have some questions we would like to ask you for
further clarification. Some relate to issues we discussed while we met you,
others to developments since that time. We would like to get a response from
your office on these issues to enable us to fully reflect the views of the
Libyan authorities in our report. For this reason we would appreciate receiving
a response by July 5.

The issues and questions we would like to request further
clarification on are the following:

We understand that there are a number of individuals who
remain imprisoned in Abu Salim who have either completed their sentences or
have been acquitted by courts. We also understand that Abu Salim and Ain Zara
prisons do not fall under the jurisdiction of the General People’s
Committee for Justice and would therefore like to know:

-What is the number of prisoners currently in
Abu Salim prison?

-What is the number of prisoners who have
served their sentences yet remain imprisoned in Abu Salim? What is the
legal basis for their continued incarceration?

-What is the number of prisoners who have
been acquitted by courts yet remain imprisoned in Abu Salim and Ain Zara? What
is the legal basis for their continued incarceration?

We also discussed with you the issue of the killings at Abu
Salim prison in 1996. We understand that Internal Security has informed a
number of families of the death of their relatives. We have also heard that a
number of families have refused the offer of compensation and insist upon their
right to know the truth of what occurred.

-What is the number of prisoners who died in
Abu Salim prison during the events that occurred at the end of June 1996? How
many of their families have authorities formally notified of the death of a
relative in those events?

-Why were family members of Abu Salim
victims, Fouad Ben Omran, Hussein Al Madany, Farag al Sharrani and Fathi
Terbil, arrested in Benghazi on March 26, 2009? What charges, if any, have been
brought against them?

-Are authorities examining the demands of the
families of Abu Salim victims who have refused the compensation and consulting
with those families?

As you know, during our visit to Abu Salim prison on April
27, 2009 we briefly met with Ali al Fakheri, known as Ibn al Sheikh al Libi.

-When did authorities discover the death of
Ibn al Sheikh al Libi?

-When did authorities initiate an investigation
into his death and when did they conclude it?

We would like to request a copy or a summary of the findings
of this investigation.

Regarding migrants and asylum seekers:

-How many boat migrants have been interdicted
and returned to Libya since May 1st? What are their nationalities?

-Where have these boat migrants been
detained? Is there a penalty in law for illegal entry or presence, and,
if so, what is it? What is the legal basis for the detention of these migrants,
and is there a limit to the time a migrant can be held in administrative
detention? Have Libyan authorities granted or promised to the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees access to all of the boat migrants who have been
returned to Libya since May 1st?

- How many individuals have Libyan
authorities deported by plane in 2006, 2007 and 2008? Please provide a
breakdown of their nationalities.

-How many individuals have Libyan authorities
deported via its land borders in 2006, 2007, and 2008? Please provide a
breakdown of nationalities.

We would also like to know:

-Is Moroccan national Issam Morchid currently
detained by External Security or any other security agency in Libya? If so,
where is he being held and on what charges?

-Are Libyan women married to non-Libyan men
prevented from handing down the Libyan nationality to their children? What is
the domestic law that applies to this situation?

-Has the investigation into the alleged
kidnapping of Daww Mansuri, which occurred on 30 June 2008 in Tripoli, been
completed? If so, please provide us with the findings of that
investigation.

One of the things we discussed when we met was the procedure
for individuals to lodge complaints against police or security officers and
what internal procedures within the General People’s Committee may
exist for this purpose before a case is transferred to the courts.

-What is the number of civilian complaints
received by the General People’s Committee for Security in 2008 and 2007?

-In 2006, 2007 and 2008, how many police
officers have been tried, how many have been acquitted and how many convicted?
Of those tried, how many of these cases were related to allegations of torture,
ill-treatment, or other violations of human rights? Can the General
Prosecutor initiate an investigation into abuses committed by internal security
officers or does this require prior approval from your ministry?

Once again, we thank you very much for our meeting and hope
to be able to return to Libya to discuss our reports with you in the near
future.

Sincerely,

Sarah Leah Whitson

Director

Middle East and North Africa Division

[1]
The relevant legislative bodies. For more on the political system see
Background.

[2]
United Nations Development Program Libya, Country Info,
http://www.undp-libya.org/countryinfo.php (accessed Sept. 29, 2009).

[4]
The National Front for the Salvation of Libya’s 1998 list of
2626prisoners, which relies on several different sources, gives an overview of
the different waves of arrest which took place, see National Front for the
Salvation of Libya, Human Rights Report, December 1998, http://www.libyanfsl.com
(accessed November 7, 2009).

[8]
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1506 (2003), S/RES/1506 (2003)
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3f8d2e164.html (accessed September 29,
2009).Libya agreed to
pay the families of victims $10 million each-$4 million after the lifting of
U.N. sanctions, another $4 million after the lifting of U.S. sanctions based on
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)and the last $2 million
when the U.S. State Department takes Libya off its list of states sponsoring
terrorism.

[11]
Statement by Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns, at
U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing Before the Committee on International
Relations, "Libya: Progress on the Path Toward Cautious
Reengagement," March 16, 2005, 109th Congress, No.
109-25, http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/109/20056.pdf (accessed
Sept. 29, 2009), p. 4.

[13]
“Confirmation of Gene A. Cretz as U.S. Ambassador to Libya,” U.S.
Department of State Office of the Spokesman, November 28, 2009,
http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2008/November/20081128140821EAifaS0.3752405.html
(accessed Aug.12, 2009).

[21]
Matthew Brunwasser and Elaine Sciolino, “Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian
doctor freed from captivity”, New York Times, July 24, 2007,
available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/europe/24iht-nurses.5.6813495.html?pagewanted=all
(accessed August 3, 2009).

[30]
According to the Libyan political system, Basic People’s Congresses exist
in every local administrative unit (sha`biyya). Each Basic People’s
Congress elects a People’s Committee (lajna sha`biyya lil –mahalla)
as an executive body that appoints a local representative to the General People’s
Congress (Mu’tamar al-Sha`b al-`Amm), the equivalent of a national
legislative assembly.

[50]
The Green Book is available in English at http://books.google.com (accessed
Sept. 29, 2009). The website of the World Center for the Study and Research of
the Green Book, an important Libyan institution, is available at www.greenbookstudies.com
(accessed Sept. 29, 2009).

[51]
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, speech given at the Second Meeting of the Youth of
Benghazi, Benghazi, August 20, 2007,
http://gdf.org.ly/index.php?lang=en&CAT_NO=114&MAIN_CAT_NO=9&Page=105&DATA_NO=252
(accessed August 15, 2009).

[73]
See Section XI below. For an overview of Waatasemu’s activities, see
their website http://www.waatasemu.org/charity/ (Arabic) (accessed Sept. 30,
2009).

[74]
For more on the violations of rights of migrants in Libya see Human Rights
Watch, Libya/Italy: Pushed Back Pushed Around, (New York, Human Rights
Watch: September 21, 2009) http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/09/21/pushed-back-pushed-around-0
(accessed September 29, 2009).

[75]Under
the agreement, the organizations will support the Libyan authorities in
"designing and implementing

comprehensive
and protection-sensitive asylum management strategies with full respect for
international and regional

[86]
“In an Unexpected Move the Government issues a Decision to Cancel the
Centre for Democracy and Association for Justice,” Libya Al Youm, June
11, 2008,http://www.libya-alyoum.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=15892&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3,
(accessed August 10, 2009).

[122]
“Press Release on Various Cases,” Gaddafi International Charity and
Development Foundation, August 10, 2009,
http://www.gdf.org.ly/index.php?lang=ar&CAT_NO=4&MAIN_CAT_NO=4&Page=105&DATA_NO=553
(accessed August 17,2009).

[124]
To establish a crime against humanity, which is among the most serious crimes
of concern to the international community as a whole, there would have to be
evidence that murder was “committed as part of a widespread or systematic
attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the
attack.”[124]
The elements to this are that the attack is committed as part of an attack
against a civilian population, the prison population in this case, and that
this was or was intended as part of a policy of attack against a civilian population.

[125]
Libya has not signed the second Optional Protocol, which pledges signatories to
abolish the death penalty. It has also not signed the Optional Protocol to CAT,
which allows visits to places of detention by the Committee against Torture. In
June 2004, Libya signed the first Optional Protocol to CEDAW, which allows the
Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women to
receive and consider complaints from individuals or groups.

[149]
“Press Release on Various Cases,” Gaddafi International Charity and
Development Foundation, August 10, 2009, http://www.gdf.org.ly/index.php?lang=ar&CAT_NO=4&MAIN_CAT_NO=4&Page=105&DATA_NO=553
(accessed August 17,2009).

[164]
Muftah Abu Zaid, “In response to to the demonstration by families of the
Abu Salim incident, Counselor Mostafa Abdeljalil, Secretary of Justice tells
Quryna ‘we have created a committee to resolve the issue in the context
of reconciliation but those who do not accept its terms are free to resort to
the courts,” Quryna, June 30, 2009.

[165]
Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for
Victims of Gross Violations of international Human Rights Law and Serious
Violations of International Humanitarian Law, March 21, 2006, adopted by the
60th session of the United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/60/147, paras. 11
(c) and 24.

[166]
Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through
Action to Combat Impunity, October 2, 1997, adopted by the UN Commission on
Human Rights, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/20/Rev.1, principle 3.

[167]The
U.N. Human Rights Committee articulated this principle in the case Quinteros
v. Uruguay, concluding that the mother of a “disappeared”
person was entitled to compensation as a victim, for the suffering caused by
the failure of the state to provide her with information. Quinteros v.
Uruguay, U.N. Human Rights Committee, Case No. 107/1981: “The
Committee understands the anguish and stress caused to the mother by the
disappearance of her daughter and by the continuing uncertainty concerning her
fate and whereabouts. The author has the right to know what has happened to her
daughter. In these respects, she too is a victim of the violations of the
Covenant suffered by her daughter in particular, of Article 7.”

[168]
Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through
Action to Combat Impunity, October 2, 1997, adopted by the UN Commission on
Human Rights, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/20/Rev.1, principle 1.

[170]
ICCPR, art. 14(1): “Everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public
hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by
law.” African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, art. 7(1) (b,
d); art. 7 states that everyone shall have the “right to be presumed
innocent until proved guilty by a competent court or tribunal” and the
“right to be tried within a reasonable time by an impartial court or
tribunal.”

[171]
UN Human Rights Commission, “Civil and Political Rights, Including the
Question of Independence of the Judiciary, Administration of Justice,
Impunity,” Report of the special rapporteur of the Sub-Commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Emmanuel Decaux, E/CN.4/2006/58,
January 13, 2006, principle 9.

[179]
His claims are consistent with what is known about the CIA's treatment of
detainees, see Human Rights Watch, Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA
Detention, February 26, 2007, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/02/26/ghost-prisoner-0
(accessed November 7, 2009) and the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector
General, Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September
2001 - October 2003), May 7, 2004 https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/Executive%20Summary_OIG%20Report.pdf
(accessed November 7, 2009).

[180]
The CIA rendered an unknown number of detainees to countries such as Libya,
Jordan, Egypt and Syria in the years following the 9/11 attacks. See Human
Rights Watch, Double Jeopardy, April 7, 2008, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/04/07/double-jeopardy
(accessed November 7, 2009).